Everyone is My Teacher
Personal Philosophy of Leadership
As an educator, my “power” is grounded in the authority vested in me by parents, by the school, the district, and the state. It may have taken extensive education and preparation to get to a point of leadership, but it does not make me “better” than anyone else by any stretch. In our department, we have paraeducators who have been working with students in our school for years. We have administrators who worked their way up from paraeducator to vice principal. We also have community members serving with us with PhDs, masters, and extensive life experience of their own. In order to cultivate a healthy collaborative learning community, it is critical to embrace a philosophy of working together and valuing diversity.
Diversity, equity, and inclusion are about so much more than simple boxes you might tick on a demographics form. Each of our students comes into our classroom with dreams, hopes, fears, experience, wisdom, and knowledge that may well be outside of our understanding. In order to build agency and autonomy in our students, preparing them for the adventure of #Adulting, it is absolutely critical to see each individual as a “teacher” in their own right. As an educator, even my most challenged students have deep wells of wisdom that we can draw from – if we pay enough attention. Every person in our department, our school, and our community – regardless of role or ability – has dreams and plans for their own life, as well as expertise and places where they are able to teach others and support students. Experiencing autonomy, authority, and celebration of success is critical to not only our students, but crafting an environment of supportive, collaborative learning. In order to cultivate this collaborative learning community, we implement the following strategies:
Representation Matters
As an Autistic educator with ADHD, I can recognize gifts and strengths in those that may be overlooked in traditional educational settings. I see patterns and structures that allow our students to shine in their academics. While our students may not be able to write the same quality of 5 paragraph essay as many of their peers, in conversation, they can provide levels of empathy and understanding of discrimination and struggles in society that can also deepen empathy in others.
Ground Rules
As an educator governed by the laws and regulations of Washington State and the School District, we must necessarily have some “rules” that are arbitrary. When we set ground rules, we rewrite them in our own language, or use our AAC devices to communicate our understanding of those “non-negotiable” acts and behaviors that we must be responsible for. In the first weeks of each semester, we review our ground rules and our class expectations. We keep them written in our own language to make sure that we don’t forget their purpose.
Class Agreements
We co-create these standards for classroom behavior and engagement with students, paraeducators, teachers, and administration in alignment with goals. We create frameworks together around “what done looks like,” and “how do you show…” We agree on reasonable expectations for one another in relationships and interactions within the classroom – and the rest of the school. We ask students to participate and share attitudes and actions that matter to them. We then make a poster and place the agreements on the walls, and each team member receives a personal copy so that we can refer to them when we miss the mark.
Partnership: Paras & Admin
Our team meets regularly to discuss critical “need-to-know” facts about our students. Many of our paraeducators have worked with multiple students, and it can be helpful to explicitly communicate implied shared understanding. By defining terms, and creating our own “team agreement” we create an environment where expectations are clearly identified and called out.
Expert Zones
Every single person has a unique special interest – even more so in SPED. If a paraeducator or student feels like an expert in an area, I want them to feel empowered to take their expertise deeper and share it with the rest of the team. Expert Zones let students, teachers, paraeducators, and admin know in advance areas in which student voice may be most valuable and appropriate.
Growth Zones
Everyone has areas in which they need to grow. Any team will have a diverse representation of skillsets and areas of challenge. By allowing vulnerability in our team, we encourage others to recognize blind spots and craft strategic, individualized growth plans. When someone is struggling, it is a commonplace practice to self-advocate and be able to acknowledge mistakes and struggles and ask for specific support.
1:1 Quarterly Check-Ins
Each quarter, individuals within the team have an opportunity to participate in a 1:1 chat with a teacher or admin. This simple 5 minute chat gives time and space for students, paraeducators, teachers, and admin to review personal goals, examine expert and growth areas, and share anything that might be relevant to their work experience. That check-in is structured around three questions:
- What is working for you?
- What is a struggle for you?
- What support can you imagine that would help you?
Trauma Informed Practice
No matter how our students arrive to us (middle school pipelines, transfers), they have likely experienced traumatic events and experiences. This is even more true following a global pandemic that disrupted education for more than 3 years. For students in special education, their experiences are often deeply shadowed by ableism, discrimination, bullying, teasing, and other traumatic experiences. In order to navigate these ACEs, developing curriculum and spaces that are sensitive to the lived experience of trauma requires careful reckoning with the amygdala, the limbic system, and the pre-frontal cortex. We must co-regulate, then connect, then either construct/create, or correct.
PACK-IT
Our Values
Passion comes in so many forms, and we want to honor those robust, strong emotions as they emerge – and give them a healthy direction to flow into. If we understand all behavior as communication, then we can see moments of escalation as opportunities for deeper learning – instead of flash points for tempers and misunderstanding.
Ability is the structural framework of skills and technique that help our students thrive. Some of these are standards set by our state governing boards, and some of them are strategic “tricks” to help students navigate the new hybrid world of multiple forms of media. Not all students can learn from lectures – Ability helps diversify their skillset.
More and more, Collaboration is King in the broader world. These days, it is more often about *who* you know and not *what* you know. Companies talk about “right fit” and “team-building” in ways that show their importance. Our students not only work together on various parts of learning, but also learn better strategies for working together – delegation, communication, and more.
It is crucial to develop our “kindness” muscles as we grow. Kindness is not being “nice”or people pleasing. Kindness involves speaking truthfully and honoring the inherent dignity and value in the person in front of you. It reflects a desire for how we want treat one another, and how we want our world to be.
Integrity matches who we are on the inside to how we act and interact in public spaces. Every human being is a leader – even if they are only leading themselves. Leadership has its roots and stability in Integrity – the practice of showing up consistently, with different facets of personality, skill, communication, and relationships *integrated* into our identity. When we practice Integrity, we invite accountability and growth.
Thoughtfulness means being mindful of ourselves, our community, our environment. It can be a pause before replying, it can be a moment of curiosity or inquisitiveness, and it can also be applying knowledge in new ways. When we are “thoughtful” or mindful, we activate our “metacognition” – the place in our brain where we embed our values and beliefs. Thoughtfulness also indicates a level of learning in which we can apply the knowledge to more than just data points. We can make connections, draw conclusions, and apply these things to our life.