When I left the classroom for a
position as a state literacy consultant with the department of education, a
mentor advised me to pay attention, to listen, to learn, and to reflect. And, that’s exactly what I've been doing for
the last 3 ½ years. Monday is my last day at the state department of education, so I thought it appropriate to share my musings here at Learning
to Muse, the blog I started to encourage myself to continue reflecting on
teaching, learning, literacy, life, and public education.
Rewards
Working for the state certainly
does not bring monetary rewards of any sort, so it’s a good thing I entered the
position with a teacher mentality of being willing to learn and give of
myself. The professional learning
opportunities were my biggest reward; they were job embedded, ongoing and
collaborative.
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| Washington, D.C December 2010 |
Working in a collaborative
setting was a highlight for me. We
had a rocking literacy branch led by a literacy leader known
for her work
nationally. We contributed to the
writing of grants for literacy work, developed models for adolescent
literacy intervention, presented at state and national conferences,
delivered webinars, met with nationally known literacy researchers, developed a
state literacy plan, updated a literacy
effectiveness review system, collaborated with the Kentucky Writing Project network,
interacted with the Bread Loaf Teacher Network, supported speaking and
listening programs through forensics, encouraged multi-modal literacies to be
taught in Kentucky schools, facilitated content leadership networks,
collaborated with faculty in higher education, facilitated cross-disciplinary
workgroups to develop units of study aligned to the CCSS for Literacy in
content areas, provided input on the review of items for the National
Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), provided content consultation for
Kentucky’s new assessment system which assesses the Common Core State
Standards, provided feedback and representation at national assessment
convenings (Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers
PARCC), contributed to the best practices applications for work with the
Partnership for 21st Century Skills, collaborated with other states
at the SCASS groups and probably more that I’m not even remembering.
Whew! We accomplished much in 3 ½ years, and I am
grateful for the opportunities to learn, to lead, and to contribute to public
education.
Challenges
Even with all the
accomplishments of our office, there were also challenges in working for the
state department of education. Challenges
I faced included: representing the agency not myself or my own professional
expertise, adhering to the strict rules and procedures in state government, accepting
decisions which were not always congruent with my professional judgment , not
getting to interact regularly with schools, teachers & students, and listening
to people complain about the state department being out of touch and
unrealistic.
It’s not a perfect system by any
means, but what I’d like others to know about the state department of education
is that there are competent, intelligent, and committed people toiling to
improve public education for students in our state.
