Recent Leadership Activities
Opportunities Since Finishing My Masters Gaining Leadership Experience
Opportunities Since Finishing My Masters Gaining Leadership Experience
In the Fall of 2022, I had an opportunity to spend a block working with Dr. Shadden as part of an administrative duty assignment. This opportunity offered me a chance to serve the teachers and students within the department, and to get experience working on administrative tasks. Dr. Shadden is a wealth of experience, knowledge, and enthusiasm. I loved getting to see his optimism and passion for students first hand. The following are some highlights of projects and tasks I completed as part of this duty.
When students register for classes, they have many options and pathways in CTE and Dual Enrollment. It is a difficult menu of choices to navigate as some classes are only available during certain years in their high school career. The registrations cards had been used for years, so Dr. Shadden asked me to make the cards easier to edit and update while making them easier for students to explore what their options are each year.
The solution was a Google Doc that showed all courses in each of the programs of study. This was critical because in order to chart a path to certain concentrations and to take advantage of some dual enrollment opportunities, students need to see the appropriate courses they need to take during their Freshman and Sophomore years that make this possible. A separate card was created for each class with the available courses highlighted. This would allow students to see where introductory courses lead to important opportunities during the Junior and Senior years.
Over the past four years, I have worked closely with Dr. Shadden to develop a system for teachers to use for organizing each program's SSQI (Size, Scope Quality Indicators) which is a part of State and Federal monitoring for the Perkins V grant. This Fall we organized a series of workshops during CTE teacher's planning blocks to highlight important changes, share best practices from colleagues, and answer questions about the SSQI portfolio process.
During one of the workshops, Dr. Shadden had a prior engagement, so I had the opportunity to facilitate the workshops on my own.
August 24 Workshop that I led in Dr. Shadden's Absence
Another slide deck from the September 27th workshop. Dr. Shadden led this meeting and I took notes.
We have an increasing number of students that are taking advantage of the Dual Enrollment grants available to pay for early access to college credits. I worked with Ms. Wolfe our Career Counselor to find classrooms that students could work in while they took their Dual Enrollment course. With close to 180 students this proved to be a logistical problem that required navigating teacher and student schedules. The goal was to pair a student with a high school teacher that could provide support and mentorship as the student took on the challenge of a Dual Enrollment course.
In addition to their coursework for the college or university, students were challenged to complete Industry Certifications in the gap weeks between the start of the high school and dual enrollment schedule. Often they had two to three weeks before the courses began to spend preparing for a certification.
I developed a Canvas course to help our Teaching as a Profession students navigate this process and prepare for the ParaPro Certification. The course was intended to provide some additional advice for being successful in a Dual Enrollment course, and it will hopefully be a template that can be replicated for other courses offered at DB.
Each year 8th grade students from Robinson and Sevier Middle Schools visit Dobyns-Bennett to tour and explore our CTE programs of study. For this year's visits and new half-day exploration was planned during a day when high school students would be virtual.
I worked closely with Ms. Wolfe to design a rotation schedule that would visually map the rotations and organize the timeline. Ms. Wolfe had already planned out the room assignments and program rotations. I made a schedule that would take the 15 groups of students and rotate them through the programs of study in 7 min increments with a minute of travel time between each program.
Dr. Shadden tasked me to work with Ms. Wolfe to organize a program exhibition for Kennedy Elementary 5th graders to explore our programs of study. We planned a variety of activities that would allow students to "put on the hat" of the program they were exploring in order to engage their attention and leave a good impression for the future when they became Dobyns-Bennett students. For example, the culinary group had chef hats and practice knife skills by cutting kinetic sand with safety knives.
I created a schedule and a map of the various exhibitions and drafted a letter for Dr. Shadden to communicate to the 5th grade teachers and administrators that would be facilitating the visit to D-B.
It had been several years since CTE teachers had an opportunity to sit down with the Guidance Counselors and share about their programs of study. Dr. Shadden felt that it was an important time to restore this practice as there had been many recent changes to the department. He tasked me with creating schedule that would allow teachers around 15-20 mins to present and field questions that counselors might have about their program. These meetings would take place during their planning periods, and the meetings would need accommodate the counselors schedule as well.
I created a schedule and shared it with the staff and counselors. I also made sure that any updates were clearly marked on the schedule and re-shared as needed. Additionally, Dr. Shadden and I shared information about the expectations for this meeting during one of the SSQI Workshops preceding the meetings.