Mentor Reflection

As I reflect on my experience over this 18-month journey, I realized I have gained an incredible amount of knowledge on being an effective teacher leader. Yet, there is much more I hope to accomplish moving forward. I left the classroom because I had a desire to reach a greater amount of students than I could within the confines of my own classroom. I realized in order to have a larger impact on student performance; I needed to be working with teachers on my campus. Looking toward my future, I now feel like I want to have an even broader impact on teachers than what is possible on my campus alone. In order to achieve this desire, I have set three goals for myself; start an educational blog, seek out professional development opportunities

With the knowledge I have gained from the Teacher Leadership program at Lamar, I think now is the perfect time to establish a blog dedicated to teaching and learning. Social networking will allow me to serve as a teacher leader for educators across the nation. It will open up opportunities for collaboration that were once impossible. I will use this blog to post instructional strategies I have introduced in PLC or ones I have witnessed in the classroom. It will provide an avenue for me to share my knowledge on the issues facing educators today, including lack of student motivation, public school curriculum, modifying instruction, and effective assessment. A great deal of my learning throughout this program has come from my interactions on the weekly discussions boards. I imagine the same will be true from the comments and connections that will be made on my

I love my job as an instructional coach, but I know I am destined for something much greater. My ultimate goal would be to serve as our district’s Elementary Math Content Coordinator. In order to achieve this goal, I will have to work extremely hard to build my content knowledge across all grade levels. I plan to do this by continuing to plan with teachers and model lessons in various classrooms. Additionally, I plan to seek opportunities to write curriculum in grade levels where I am not as familiar with the content. Since my classroom experience and expertise is in the primary grades, I also plan to help prepare and present professional development for the intermediate grade levels. I have spent a lot of time studying the student expectations for each grade level and I think the more opportunities I take to familiarize myself with the curriculum, the more prepared I will be to step into this role in the future. I feel the job of content coordinator would be the ultimate culmination to this journey because it will not only allow me to have an impact on students and teachers, but also have a significant influence on other teacher