Visionary Leadership


 Prompt  Think about a leader who exemplifies one or more of the visionary leadership characteristics listed in ISTE standard. Provide a brief description of his/her leadership style and an example of how he/she inspires, engages, and/or advocates. How does your leadership style compare to the visionary leadership characteristics? 
Upon reflecting on the many leaders that I have had in my career as an math educator, one that exemplifies many of the ISTE characteristics is my current Math Department Chair, Katherine Demaray. From the moment that I emerged from my interview with her and others on the school team, I knew that, if I had the privilege of being offered that particular job, I I would value and truly enjoy working along side of her.  She would be my first female math department chair, and I was so looking forward to developing a growing partnership with her.

Well, fast forward three and half years, I did get the job (yay!) and Katherine and I have worked closely together to refine our departments curriculum and vision and it has been such a blessing! First and foremost, she is a learner- for example, we joined and led a book club together for our math department, and she modeled how to continue to develop and improve ones instruction as a result. She has also recently become a Khan Academy Ambassador and is not only using Khan Academy in her classroom, but she is professionally developing and training other teachers within our school on how to best implement such strong technology tools within their curriculum. She shares and shows how to analyze data in such a way that guides her instruction, and leads her students to identify their needs, as well. Additionally, she is a collaborator and designer- as she has purposely changes her teaching preps so that she is not a "master" of just one curriculum- but one who can join a new collaboration and learn, design, invest, and help upgrade as well. Upon new curriculum ventures, she shows others within her collaboration team how to weave in technology by using simple word clouds, to gathering data via Khan. In small and large ways she collaborates and designs seamlessly with others. In conclusion, she emulates the TPACK  standards purposefully and diligently.  She implements a shared vision centered on technology that better improves our department, and ultimately, the learning opportunities of our students. 

I am blessed to have Katherine as a leader and as a friend- she has enabled me to grow, reflect, and inspire others in our journeys as maths educators. Our leadership styles and very similar, as our personalities and interests, and we value and seek one another's inputs and contributions on a regular basis to each other, and to those within our department. 




Comments

  1. UnknownSeptember 10, 2018 at 5:07 PM

    Silvia,

    I find it great that you have someone who you are able to work alongside who is so inspirational. She seems great! I love that this is also math related!

    I find Khan Academy to be a great resource. I feel with a one-to-one technology initiative it is very important to incorporate a variety of technology resources. It would be great to know more about Khan! Maybe you should tell her to write a blog! :)

    Thank you for your information!

    ReplyDelete

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