Change in Perspective
Over the past three years, my leadership style vascillated between a "hands-off" approach and empowerment of my teachers. With the demands of a full teaching schedule and the added responsibilities of serving as the lead special education teacher, leading through example was extremely difficult. After my first semester in the program, I have learned the importance of leveraging the skills of your team and empowering team members to take risks/accept additional responsibilities. As I prepared for the first special education department meeting at my school, I spent a day looking at the literature regarding professional learning communities (PLC). While the term is cast about regularly in the educational community, the implementation of PLC's look vastly different. For example, in my school PLC's feel more like departmental meetings where the principal goes through an agenda and delivers information. Teachers discussed the key ideas but there was not a sense of communit...