Well this has been a fast paced week.  With me starting my CTC position for summer school and all the research material to be read, I have seen how time is a precious commodity.  I spoke with my site supervisor and we started discussing many things that will be ideas to look at in the future, but his word were very thoughtful, "keep it simple and do one thing at a time."  He loves that I have all this enthusiasm, but he cautioned me that I will burn out quickly if I try to do everything all at once.  I believe that he has my best interest at heart by saying this and now I feel a little less overwhelmed.  Some of the things that I learned throughout this week as I read and watched the videos, is that many of our administrators these days don't follow the same practices that we are learning about.  Many have forgotten the teamwork effort and thus we are thrown into a fire that we have to put out.  There are success stories in the readings, as there should be, however I am starting to wonder the practicality of the information versus what we are modeled at school.  Modeling what you want is paramount in not only the classroom, but administrators should be striving to do this for the faculty as well.  The district should be modeling what they want and the state should be modeling what it wants, but they then turn around and "ask, or demand" something completely different.  This is what has stuck out to me through various readings. 

I was actually very impressed with some of the ideas that Mr. Briseno and Dr. Lewis presented in the videos and I hope to employ some of the ideas as I become an inquirer leader.  The Gates foundation ideas sounds like it would be an avenue for me to pursue on many accounts.  I have heard of this before, however I had heard that they were instrumental in the technology part of teacher productivity from what I had read.  I think it is great that major role players on the financial front are taking an interest in the effectiveness of teaching, while allowing the teachers to strive to become better learners themselves through the data.  I just wonder when the legislature will start following the idea of working with teachers and not dictating the "data" in an unfamiliar way? 

Oh well, just some thoughts on what I was thinking about this week!

Until next time.....