Kelley Nobles 

My Path to Leadership

 

 

 

I have always thought of myself as a life-long learner. I truly believe that one of my most important roles as an educator is not only to instill this belief in my students, but also to model it for them through my own practice. Additionally, I believe that the process of learning cannot be done in isolation. Instead, to engage in the most meaningful learning, one must form collaborative relationships with others. I began the Master of Arts in Education program with several goals in mind. First, I wanted to live up to this teaching philosophy and dive into an area of education that was unknown to me. Next, I wanted to find better and more effective ways to work with my teammates in order to enhance my practice and the lives of my students. I chose to concentrate in School Leadership in hopes that I would learn different collaborative structures, and ways in which I could encourage my colleagues to build more trusting relationships with one another. What I found was that this program allowed me to reach these goals as I discovered parts of my practice (and myself) that I never knew existed.

 

The courses I took throughout the program allowed me to clearly define the characteristics of a leader. I learned the type of leadership that is most effective, and was able to identify some of these characteristics within myself. From there, I established a set of guidelines for myself as I interact with my colleagues and have already begun to see the amazing results of true collaborative work within my school. With this new understanding of leadership and all that is involved in taking on a leadership role, my goals began to shift.

 

I realized that I didn’t want to just use this enhanced appreciation for collaboration with my immediate coworkers within my grade level team, but could expand this knowledge base and skills throughout the staff. I began to think about my school differently- not just as groups of teachers working solely within their grade levels, but rather as an organization. From this perspective, I began to build confidence as someone who could affect change on a school wide level.

 

Although hesitant at first, I worked through the many layers of creating a plan for teacher learning and school wide improvement. I saw the goals that I had set for myself and my individual classroom expand to include every teacher and every student in the building. I worked to create a timeline and budget to implement the plan that I created, tasks that had seemed so far out of my skillset a few semesters ago. As I near completion of the program, I can no longer think of myself as a life-long learner without envisioning how I could use what I have learned to impact the rest of the school. My goals transitioned from improving my own practice and creating the best learning experiences for my students through my work within my team to positively affecting the lives of students school wide through collaborative work as a staff.