If I wrote the story of my career with superintendent chapters, today's announcement marks the upcoming end of the third chapter and beginning of the fourth chapter.
This makes me realize that educators who commit their entire professional career to teaching change a lot as they travel that teaching/learning path.
At first, you're just trying to figure out what to do and how to do it. Everything is new and you're eager to do what you can to teach well.
Then you become a bit more savvy about the job with knowledge of who and what may help you teach well. In this stage you're ready to take on new challenges and your teaching/learning rises substantially.
The third chapter for me, a chapter that started with one superintendent and ended with another, found me in a place where I desired great change and looked for ways to have voice and choice with regard to that change. This, for me, has been the rockiest chapter since, in many ways, there has been substantial change within and outside of the school system related to teaching well. I started this chapter with great, unpolished advocacy and the desire to reach, and I believe I'm ending it with a much clearer picture of how to advocate, ally, and advance teaching/learning craft, impact, and voice.
In the last and final chapter of my teaching career, I will work with those within and outside of the system where I teach to continue to learn, improve my craft, and advocate for better teaching/learning communities--communities that represent distributed leadership, success for ALL students, greater equity and cultural proficiency, stakeholder choice and voice, and more dynamic transparency and share.
At this point, I want to support the educators, students, and families I teach and learn with to help promote the best possible teaching and learning environment--an environment where everyone's voice and choice matters and an environment that utilizes modern, strategic process and welcomes diversity, discussion, and debate.
Many years ago when I came to the system where I teach I was impressed by the level of intellectual investment, camaraderie, creativity, and care. As I look to the final chapter, I hope that I can contribute to those terrific attributes, attributes that elevate the system where I teach and the success possible.
