Week 1 Reflection

Week of 4/19
Be Ready for the Unexpected

One of the biggest things I learned about being a leader this week is that there
are many unexpected things that come up along the way and you have to be
prepared to deal with them. I was feeling overwhelmed by the amount of time I
was spending preparing for this Intramural. In addition to getting the plans ready
for the first day, I had to create spreadsheets for each teacher with their students’
information on them (student name, contact information, learning option--remote
or hybrid, parent contact information). That took me a few hours to do. I emailed
everything out to the teachers Saturday night. Tina created courses in
Schoology for everyone so that we could send messages and attach information
for our groups. Instead of the messages going to everyone, they would just be
sent to our group members. I thanked her and asked her if she wouldn’t mind
changing a few students around and adding a few students to the courses. I also
had teachers write down the Google Meets links/nicknames they were using on a
shared Google Doc.

On Sunday night, as I was looking at the Google Form responses, I noticed that
two new students signed up. I accepted them into the program, but then stopped
the form from accepting new responses. I should have done this prior to Sunday
night, but in the future, I’ll know. Tina added these two students to her group and
gave two Dual Language students to Esperanza. Esperanza had wanted to work
with all the Dual Language students because her group is translating the writing
on the exhibit boards into Spanish. Esperanza originally questioned why I didn’t
give her all the Dual Language students in the first place. I explained that if I
had, Tina’s group would have been much smaller and I wanted to make sure she
had at least nine students. Next time I do this I’ll let teachers know how the
groups were organized.

On Monday morning, I emailed the participating staff members reminding them to

send a message to their group students in Schoology about the Intramural. At
3:30, we all met remotely with our students since Mondays are remote. I had
written this basic plan for Monday’s Intramural and shared it out with the team
encouraging them to add ideas to it. I did reiterate to the participating teachers
that in addition to discussing the project, they should focus on the why of the
project: the importance of learning and preserving local historical landmarks. I
had also added everyone as collaborators to the Google Folder that Nicole from
the Dunn Museum shared with us with all the articles, pictures and information
about the 4 landmarks.
The Intramural also meets on Wednesdays, which is a hybrid learning day. I had
to make sure that participating staff sent reminders to the parents of students
who were in-person. I sent a reminder email about this on Tuesday night. On
Wednesday morning, a few parents of students from other groups inquired about
the Intramural and where their child should be picked up. I again sent another
reminder email (set to high importance) to participating teachers. Then, about
2:00 that day, the secretary came up to my room asking about the Intramural.
She had no idea I was doing this. I had sent the information to the Principal and
the Assistant Principal and assumed they would share this information with the
school secretaries. Well, you know what they say about assuming... I apologized
for the oversight and sent Mary the Intramural information (dates, time, staff
members involved) so that in future she could announce the Intramural in the
morning and field any calls from parents about picking up their child that day.
Fortunately, all students were picked up that day by 4:15.

On Thursday, I arranged a Zoom meeting with Nicole from the Dunn Museum
and with the participating staff members ( I asked if Thursday or Friday worked
best and three out of the four voted for Thursday). I had set the meeting for
3:30, and stated that in the email. However, I mistakenly arranged the meeting
time on the Zoom invitation for 3:00. After another staff member inquired about
this, I had sent an email apologizing for the confusion and stating the correct
meeting time of 3:30. Tina was unable to attend the meeting, but I recorded it for
her and sent her a brief outline of what was shared/discussed. I am glad I
scheduled the meeting so we had the opportunity to share our questions and to
celebrate our successes.

As you can see, there are a lot of little unexpected things that arise--things I did
not anticipate. But, I am learning a lot that will help in future planning of projects
like this and in my role as a teacher leader.