This week kicked off the start of an exiting new year in my district. On Tuesday, we welcomed our newest colleagues with an introduction to the district and a connection to our ever-growing, ever-improving mentoring program.  Each of these teachers had been carefully selected with through a two-tier interview process focusing on the tenets of our PLC and our strategic plan.  Their nervous excitement was palpable as we began the day, and their enthusiasm and questions assured us we had made the right decisions.  Now it was up to us to nurture that enthusiasm and support these teachers as they become integral members of our team.

On Wednesday we welcomed back our entire faculty and staff.  We began the day with a welcome address from the Superintendent, School Committee, and Central Office Team.  New faculty and staff at every level of the organization were introduced, appreciation for summer work of teachers and dedication and support of the custodial and support staff was given. The message was clear, the people sitting in front of us are the most important resource that the district has to support learning, to support our students, to empower all students in our district to excel.  The direction was clear, we will focus on re-building and strengthening our PLC through our work with systems thinking, collaboration, and hard work.  We will improve our assessment skills, develop quality curriculum and implement with fidelity, enhance our communication, empower our students to own their learning, and integrate technology into pedagogy and as a tool to support all areas of our work.  We were reminded again of Fullan, this will be an "undeniably difficult, but definitely doable" journey and we would support each other along the way.

On Thursday and Friday, we began the work together as a collaborative PLC.  I was privileged to lead the learning for several teams; however, I was not alone in my work. Teachers and administrators from across the district showed tremendous leadership as they led teams of teachers in professional development activities designed around the focus areas noted above. Our promise to the teachers moving forward: more opportunities for teacher to teacher sharing and learning, more opportunities for teacher leadership, and more opportunities to celebrate and support the amazing work that is going on in the district.

What does next week bring?  The reason we are educators.  On Monday, we welcome our students back from their summer vacation.  

I just finished a year-long study of the math Common Core State Standards (CCSS) with the elementary teachers in my district as we developed our new curriculum.  I provided professional development, workshops, opportunities to attend conferences, and time for collaboration. We learned, we studied, we stressed, and we developed a solid, rigorous, and authentic curriculum.  The year was coming to a close, and we searched and we searched and searched some more for resources to support the quality work we had developed and the instruction we were ready to deliver.  Every text we opened, every program we explored, every option we uncovered fell short. We made the difficult decision not to purchase anything knowing that this would place extreme pressure on our teachers to develop quality materials and resources each and every day. 

We had been lurking on the Engage NY website, and we were impressed with what we saw. Highly trained mathematicians and teachers were working side by side to develop high quality, aligned math units and lessons.  We desperately wanted to be a part of that collaborative work.  Lurking transitioned to phone call after phone call, and finally Eureka!  We were introduced to the professional development coordinator from www.commoncore.org, Sandra Elliott, or Elliott as she is called.  Elliott welcomed us to the table for training and provided an opportunity for us to purchase the same resources developed and used through the Engage NY project.  For districts outside New York, these materials are known as Eureka! Math.

We poured over the pdf releases.  We shared the documents with our teachers.  We tried the lessons.  We needed more training.  Elliott welcomed us to the table again; however, it would require a trip to Yuma, Arizona.  Hot, distant, Yuma could not have been further away; however, the district serving 10,000 students had also decided to adopt the aptly named Eureka!  I couldn't control my enthusiasm.  Before I knew it, several other districts were interested as well, one of which even opted to take the cross-country trek along side us.  

The university conference room was packed with teachers from across the Yuma District as well as other interested "lurkers" from Illinois, Rhode Island, Louisiana, and Douglas, Arizona and the full resources had not even gone public yet.  Why the excitement?  Training was not about a program, but about shifts in mathematical instruction, embedding practices into instruction, and using models.  Strategies were immediately presented that could be used the first day of school with students.  The problems were authentic, the learning was visual and kinesthetic, and the learning was fun.  As a curriculum director, I would not be with the students teaching, coaching, facilitating and debriefing on a daily basis, and I found myself feeling envious of the teachers sitting next to me.  I decided that when I grew up, I wanted to be a math teacher.  I wanted to return to the classroom and watch the faces of students as the look of discovery crossed their faces. I wanted to be a teacher in a classroom where students thought math was fun, and asked for more.  I wanted to experience students solving higher-order problems, creating solutions, collaborating with their peers, and debriefing and owning their learning. 

Since, I will not return to my district as a math teacher, I will return to train my teachers to use these materials and I will celebrate the successes of their students with them.  I will visit the classrooms often to see practice in action. So, maybe I will not grow up to be a math teacher after all, but I will be there to support them along their amazing work!

For the past few years, Twitter has be an important and integral part of my professional learning network (PLN).  I first began using Twitter to develop my PLN during the ISTE2011 Conference in Philadelphia at the encouragement of some outstanding educators like Vicki Davis @coolcatteacher, Steve Hargadon @stevehargadon, and Collett Cassinelli @ccassinelli. Although I was already an advocate for purposeful integration of technology with a focus on pedagogy first, it was at that conference that I began to truly understand what it meant to be a "connected educator."

I remember attending a forum entitled "Leadership Vision".  In fact, I still have my notes:
Leadership ISTE Forum
6.25.11
Facilitated by: Scott McLeod (University of KY and Castle)
Notes: Paula Dillon
What are we doing for our leaders?
❒ Technology needs to be rooted in the pedagogy
❒ Don’t assume that every teacher in the building is ready to use
❒ Build a demand for it
❒ Need to create a mission and a vision for the school/district and define everything in 
terms of that vision/mission
❒ Training for the administrators and have them use it in their own practice as 
instructional leaders
❒ Talk about the application not the technology 
❒ Must be part of a long-range plan
❒ How does it improve student learning has the be the essential question
❒ Model and allow visits to where it is working well
❒ Use the “look for” walk-through model to have conversations that are reflective and 
not evaluative in nature 
❒ Move away from a tool focus to a teaching and learning focus

After introductions, it was evident that I was one of a small minority of administrators present. The majority of the attendees in that session were teachers who passionately wanted to engage the leadership in their district in creating a vision where technology was embedded into practice transforming teaching and learning.  I came back from that conference promising myself that I would support my district in this transformation; that I would be an educational leader who collaborated with teachers to make that vision a reality.

Fast forward two years, and I am still working on that vision in collaboration with my technology director, superintendent, finance director, administrative team, teachers, parents and students.  Are we there yet?  No.  Will we get there?  We have a vision, we have a plan, and so yes, I am confident that we will.  I am surrounded by like-minded administrators who have varying degrees of comfort and expertise with technology, yet a common understanding of the need to support the integration of technology in teaching and learning.  In district there have been and will continue to be drop-in technology sessions, flipped professional development sessions, teachers teaching teachers, collaborative team times, and curriculum writing sessions where embedding technology is a focus area.  In addition, we will be adding on un-conferences and student led sessions for parents in the upcoming year.  We will be asking our professional learning communities to answer the following essential question as an umbrella for decision-making, "How do our curriculum and instructional strategies ensure that our students can create and innovate, collaborate, communicate, and think critically?"

So if I am confident about my district, why am I writing this blog?  To be honest, I was at first taken aback and then very concerned after participating in an #edtechchat on a recent Monday night facilitated by @katarinastevens.  Katarina asked very relevant questions and the level of participant engagement was high.  The resources and suggestions for implementation suggested were strong.  So why the concern? Again, I was one of a minority of administrators present, and the overall reaction of the group was that a major struggle in effectively embedding technology into instruction is lack of support by administrators.  Is this the current reality or a perception caused by other factors? Whether it is reality or perception, how do we as administrators change that image and become a support to a very organic move by teachers to integrate technology into their practice?  How do we help ensure that our students have both the basic skills and the 21st century skills to compete globally in a rapidly changing world?  How do we become partners in education in true Professional Learning Community fashion?  What are our shared missions, visions, goals and how will we improve education for all of our students at high levels?  

To be done well, we will need to build a strong culture of trust and collaboration as outlined by Richard Dufour and Michael Fullan.  To be done well, we will need to value pedagogy and what can be learned from the meta-analysis of John Hattie and Robert Marazano and the studies of Andy Hargraves and Michael Fullan.  To be done well we need to work as a team with a common purpose.  To change follow Dr. W. Edwards Deming's advice and, "Plan, Do, Study, Act."