Tuesday Reflection

Today, we had two of our guest presenters work with the STEM teachers. Stephanie Dodman led us through a discussion of teacher leadership and Lori Bland got us started on working with data to help us understand our schools and students better.

Teacher leadership is topic I love because of my work with our math specialist program. At the beginning of her talk, Stephanie Dodman started by explaining the growth in leadership roles, both formal and informal in schools, beyond the traditional position of principal. I know our math specialists feel passionately about their desire to stay in schools and their desire to work to effect change in them by working with their fellow teachers. I emphasize "working with" because teacher leadership is not a concept about mandating from above but rather working in a grassroots fashion in the local context. I always feel like creating teacher leaders in our schools is how we can best provide professional development in they way it should be - locally, ongoing, on the spot, responsive, led from within. Ultimately, we'll have a stronger teacher workforce.

At the beginning of the day, we started by thinking about leadership of self. How does a classroom teacher know and model best practices for teaching, collaborating with colleagues and putting students' learning first? Then, how can teachers become leaders in their communities? This leadership of self cannot happen without colleagues and friends. My hope is that our teacher participants leave with new friends and colleagues to count on when they go back to their schools.

We finished the day with a quick look at Common Core Mathematics Practices and the Next Generation Science Standards. The question arose about how Common Core will impact Virginia schools if Virginia is not a Common Core state. The answer is that we brought this up because - like it or not - Common Core is shaping the national landscape of STEM education and is one of the major policy questions if the moment. Resources, textbooks, assessments, software, etc are all being shaped around Common Core and those resources may be part of the Virginia landscape. The language of "mathematical practices" is making its way into the common lexicon of education. As leaders, we need our teachers to understand not only what is happening in Virginia but what happens in the nation as we are in an increasingly connected global, national landscape. 

Onward till tomorrow!