COMPETENCIES
Below you will find each of the 21 competencies. Included with each is an artifact and description of my work towards mastery this school year.
Communication
One of my duties as 6th grade AP was to be the prime contact for any parents and students in the 6th grade. I spoke regularly with families about their students educational plan, questions about attendance and grades, buses, technology, and any other aspect of the school day. I ensured to respond within 24 hours and was always careful with my wording to create positive relationships with families.
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Change Management
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One of our monthly writting assignments for this year was to draft a memo highlighting a change to current plans or policy. For this assignment I wrote about a real life change at my school involving our packet pickup. I was thoughtful in giving the right amount of details as well as sending the memo in a timely manner. These things are important to allow staff members to make plans and changes as necessary.
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Conflict Management
Managing staff, student, and family conflicts is a regular aspect of school administration. I had the opportunity to participate in conflict management in each of these areas throughout the year. At the beginning of the year we had a staff member who regularly caused conflict with those around her. I was able to carefully word my responses to descalate her anger. I was able to work with a few specific students this year on their behavior mangagement in order to support their learning. In addition, I handled multiple parent complaints throughout the year about grades, attendance and teacher concerns.
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Creative Thinking
After a parent suggestion on incorporating more student engagement activities, I volunteered to run a school wide talent show. I had previously helped run a school talent show however with the current guidelines I had to be creative on how to plan an inclusive event that anyone could participate in. Along with my talent show committee, we have publicised our talent show, collected auditions and finalized our ten talent show contestants for our final, virtual talent show event on April 27th. I am excited about this event which will alow students to show their creativity as well!
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Customer Focus
One of the ways we created a customer focus this year was through our creative packet pickup themes! As the administrative team, we brainstormed a different theme and give away for each week's packet pickup opportunity. I also decorated the front entry of the school to create a festive atmosphere that was welcoming for families. This picture was from our first theme day after returning from Winter Break!
Delegation
While planning Northern Granville's talent show, I was able to create a committee of diverse staff members to help with the process. These members brainstormed ideas, promoted the event, judged the talent and gave feedback to students. This was incredibly helpful as it would have taken a large amount of time to run the event myself. Additionally, during the planning stage they thought of many creative ideas and ways to promte the event and our school.
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Dialogue/Inquiry
Communication was a very important this year as I worked closely with the sixth grade team. The majority of teacher in the sixth grade were new to teaching, or new to the country. We made it a priority to meet regularly and stay in contact. Many times I scheduled meetings, but I also encouraged the team leads to connect with their coworkers and schedule meetings as needed.
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Emotional Intelligence
One area that I really enjoyed this year was being able to build relatioships with the staff at my new school. I found areas of commonality with many of them, and enjoyed talking with different individuals thorughout the day. With students being virtual much of the year, I had more opportunities to sit down with staff members and really make personal connections.
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Environmental Awareness
Staying knowledgable on the district focuses this school year was incredbily important. I made a point to carefully read each weekly district annoucement, attend all board meetings or read the minutes afterward, and attend any district meetings that I was invited to. Staying on top of new policies and procedures helped make any necessary transitions smooth.
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Global Perspective
One of the unique things about Northern Granville Middle School is that we have the highest number of international teachers at our school in the district. This allows for some really exciting opportunities for ourselves as staff, as well as students. This year, one of the 6th grade teachers prepared a cultural activity where students and staff could meet with various teachers from around the world and learn a little about their culture. We also incorporated some aspects of the arts by sharing special activities related to the Jamaican culture.
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Judgement
I have practiced using judgement to handle discipline issues this school year. As a part of my duties, I worked closely with the sixth grade students and handled any disciplinary issues involving these students. I had to use my judgement to decide what appropriate consequences were for various levels of behavior.
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Organizational Ability
One of the things that I enjoy doing is creating spreadsheets and organizing data. I volunteered to organize our information for students who were at risk for retention this school year. This was a big task, as we had over 200 students on this list. I compiled all the data we had on students and formatted it in an easily accessible manner. This has been incredibly helpful in providing information on what students to target for summer school and provide additional supports to.
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Personal Ethics and Values
One of the things that I learned throughout this whole process is the importance of building relationships. While I was working as a classroom teacher I saw the importance of building relationships with my students, but my internship has really shown me how effective you can be when you build relationships with your coworkers. I was able to have many conversations with teachers and staff about teaching practices, give suggestions for implementation and positively effect overall instruction. I believe the relationships that I built with these teachers are the main reason that I was able to impact student learning. Had the teachers not felt like I appreciated them and valued them, they may not have listened to my guidance. I discussed these relationships in many of my weekly reflections.
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Personal Responsibility for Performance
Responsiveness
One of my personal goals is to be available to staff and students as much as possible. This school year I rarely closed my office doors and made a point to respond to emails and phonecalls prior to the 24 hour district suggestion. Not all famlies are available during "normal business hours" and I wanted to be able to support the various needs of our families the best that I could.
Results Orientation
Data is one of my biggest passions in education. This year I worked with the sixth grade team in various ways to look at and make decisions based on various data points. Recently, I worked with the team on creating a plan for our EOG "bubble" students. We identified the students who had a reasonable chance of passing the EOGs and made actionable plans on how to provide additional support to these students during the last few weeks of the year.
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Sensitivity
One of the writting assignments that I was tasked this school year was to draft a letter informing the school community about a death. This assignment required me to use sensitivity in the wording and response that I took. Having sensitivity also helped me to be thoughtful in the services I would provide to students and staff in this scenario.
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Systems Thinking
This year I was the technology prime for Northern Granville Middle School. This meant that I worked closely with our technology consultant to provide services to students and staff regarding devices. Due to the complications with COVID-19, the technology representative and I developed various systems to track and manage device repairs, roll-out events and technology tickets. By implementing these systems we were better able to account for devices and ensure that protocols were being followed.
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Technology
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One of my duties this school year was to be the technology representative for the school. My first big project for this role was to plan and manage the chromebook rollout event for the incoming 6th graders. In addition to managing that event I helped with technology issues for staff and students throughout the year. Student chromebook repairs went through me first and were then passed along to our technology department representative. Additionally I met with our technology person weekly to get updates on how everything was progressing.
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Time Management
Visionary
As a part of my classes, we were charged with identifying our personal education vision as well as the vision that we would implement at a future school. These practiced helped me to think about what important ideas I have about education and how to implement policies and practices in a school that build toward that vision.
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