If you are reading this, that means you are a leader that has a hunger to grow more to help your school. Great Job! My reflection recently occurred during a long run how my growth as a learner and as a leader simply came from three areas using social media. I recognized that most of the inspiration, ideas, and strategies for this growth has been from my PLN through social media. In today’s modern age, there are endless Twitter chats, Voxer chats, e-books to read, podcasts to listen, webinars etc….to learn from but I found that there are “Three aspects to focus on with social media in your growth” that can maximize your opportunity.
As I share these, I hope you recognize that this is for my current role and growth as a leader. For leaders, it will vary to an extent based upon where he/she is at in their journey as a leader.
The areas that I found gave me the greatest growth came from the following three areas:
- Culture – there are many great ideas out there from true practitioners on this topic. I encourage you to always learn and see if it can help drive your building forward. Culture and building it to focus on students while supporting your staff is the most important part of your role.
- Leadership – Yes, all of us can improve and we must continually search for those innovate ways to connect to our younger teaching staff, students with different needs than in the past and how to reconnect our parents to our schools. Most importantly, learning how to develop others as leaders is how you make a great school!
- Future Learning Experiences – To ensure that we are preparing our students for anything, it is essential that our classrooms develop skills in students NOW to prepare them for success. This includes instructional lessons, blended learning and the overall focus of how the learning experience occurs within your building.
As you learn new aspects and implement within your role, keep in mind the following progression to ensure quality implementation. It takes the following path:
- Learning new instructional approaches/strategies that apply to your role
- Apply those into your role by implementing that strategy
- Reflect upon its impact (did it serve the right purpose)
- Gather feedback from those that were involved in the new approach
- Revise your approach if needed for future use
Use your learnings to find ways to move your school forward. This includes:
- Embracing an open culture that stimulates learning
- Narrow the focus of your school so the staff can deepen their learning on a few essential ideas (quality vs quantity).
- Challenge each other to think about past practices and why those were used, how did it benefit learners and are there other options to consider that would better serve our learners?
- Focus on strengths of staff and maximize their impact with your school community.
In short, we must continue growing and learning as the field of teaching/learning has changed so much. It has helped me on social media to focus on those three critical areas, as they are the backbone of growth for me as a learner and leader.
Learn
Engage
Adapt
Delegate
Empower
Reflect
Serve
I look forward to hearing from you about your thoughts on ways you grow as a leader using social media. Comment below or reach out to me at leadlearnerperspectives@gmail.com
Lead Learner Perspectives 