Monday, April 25, 2011

Live and Learn- or in my case, learn and live!

Life’s timing amazes me sometimes. One day I’m browsing the PLS web and thinking about taking this class on learning about 21st century skills. The next, I’m enrolled and fearful! Digital stories- um, never heard of such a thing. Web 2.0? I’ll google it. Blogs? Nothing I have done before. Rubrics and assessments- finally familiar terms! I’ll take the class and give it a try. Risk-taking. I decided to step outside of my comfort zone and try new things. And I’m so glad I did. Before long, I’m learning about organizational and social change and the impact it can have on education. As I stated before- life’s timing amazes me at times. Just a few weeks back, my superintendent called for a district meeting regarding the difficult times Pennsylvania is facing with education and the state budget. As a result, our district is about to face many drastic changes. We have many positions that have been eliminated, we will be closing a neighborhood school, we will be losing some of our arts and humanities classes and we are looking at a potential pay freeze. We are facing a time in which many people are affected individually, yet we must remain as a team and work in a way that is empathetic and effective to this difficult process. We are still early in the change process. So far, I have found my superintendent to be a learner with each step he takes- and a leader with each action he makes. He has been mindful of his teachers and staff and sincerely compassionate to the resistance we have experienced.  While all of these changes are new for the school district, the families, and the community; I am confident that with our leader’s change process we will still be successful with the new changes our district will encounter.  It has been such a valuable experience for me to learn about these changes as I will now be able to have more awareness and sensitivity to the issue.  I think we should all keep in mind the quote by Adam Urbanski, “If we always do what we’ve always done, we will get what we’ve always got.” We are living in a time in which our world is changing and education is changing. We must keep up!  I’m about to live what I’ve just learned.

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