COVID-19

District technology Coach

Leadership Through Turbulent Times

Leading up to the last 2 weeks before the shutdown, I spearheaded school-wide professional development for staff to turnkey during homeroom. This benefited our students greatly with their proficiency in G-Suite. Additionally, technology surveys were administered to all students to ensure they would receive adequate devices and resources to succeed at home.

The COVID-19 pandemic immensely evolved my leadership philosophy. Before transitioning to remote learning, when an issue arose, my predominant leadership style would have been closely aligned to servant or crisis management. I would listen to staff/student issues and fix it for them. When the person-to-person approach wasn't feasible, I was not able to solve all the issues myself. Therefore, I had to evolve my leadership philosophy to one that built capacity within staff and students. I accomplished this by creating comprehensive tutorials on resources for students, staff, and parents that were easy to follow and available whenever they needed to refer back to them. Additionally, through daily dialogue with teachers, students, and parents, I performed weekly needs assessments. The data gathered from the needs assessments allowed me to gather resources, documents, and create videos over the weekends to assist all parties in acquiring the tools necessary to meet their current needs. Throughout the shutdown, I provided ongoing training for staff on many of the G-Suite applications such as Google Classroom, Google Meet, and others in addition to Zoom and Khan Academy. This enhanced our educator's remote instructional toolset and level of comfort. The increased level of proficiency was evident with our student attendance and feedback from staff, parents, board members, and stakeholders.

As with any monumental event, lessons were learned and adjustments made. One critical component that was modified was the collaboration with parents. Having a consistent dialogue with parents on school events and their child's performance is not sufficient. We must provide periodic professional development for parents. Professional development should consist of developing proficiency of the learning platforms that are used in school as well as the supplemental resources that are available. By doing so, we empower parents and increase their sense of accountability towards their child's education. Furthermore, periodic surveys to assess the needs of all constituents is a non-negotiable. The data acquired from the surveys leads to making better informed decisions and continuously strive towards achieving an equitable environment for learning holistically.