This past week was my first week as Superintendent in the Salisbury Township School District. While I have the advantage of having been an administrator in the district for 9 years, it was able to experience both challenges and exciting moments of learning.
One of the things I have enjoyed most, especially over the past several years, is the collaboration and exchange of ideas with my fellow colleague and collaborator, Lynn Fuini-Hetten. One of those moments was, for me, a learning highlight of the week.
Early in the week during a meeting of all our leaders, one of the agenda items that garnered the most energy from the team pertained to a plan to ramp up our use of social media to engage parents, students and public around a new district hashtag – #stsdfalcons. During the meeting administrators asked for more opportunities to learn about and get comfortable with social media. Door opened…
On Wednesday, it was decided county-wide that because of cold temperatures and wind chills, school on Thursday would be delayed 2 hours. Lynn, always the creative thinker, came up with a great idea – let’s invite everyone on the administrative team – 14 of us at the moment – to a breakfast meeting for some digital leadership learning. What a great idea!
The meeting was optional, and we had 10 leaders in attendance. With little time to prepare, I pulled some pieces from an earlier presentation, and we used our time to help develop confidence and comfort with Twitter. (Here’s the resource we used for this relatively impromptu learning.) Some leaders were totally new to Twitter and needed accounts while most others had accounts but had not used them in awhile. Near the end of our time together, the question was asked, “How can teachers use this in the classroom.” Another door opened…
Here was a great example of using some new-found time to our advantage – developing our learning as digital leaders and creating synergy on the topic of social media that will likely work its way to the classroom. A highlight of my week and a great reason to be in Salisbury!
How do you use the gift of time for learning when it comes upon you during the winter season?
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[…] various software tools used by our students and teachers. One of the most memorable, though, was an impromptu professional learning session on Twitter which occurred in the middle of winter. As a leadership team we took good advantage of a 2-hr cold […]