For those of you who don't know what i do, I am a Instructional Design and Delivery Specialist for the school district in my community. Right about now you may be asking yourself, "Exactly what is it that an IDD specialist does?" or more than likely, you're asking yourself, "What in the Sam Hill is that?"
In a nutshell, here's my job:
Learning Environment Supporter – Increases the quality and effectiveness of instruction.
• Model lessons in classrooms on a daily/weekly basis. Components of modeling include: planning with the teacher or team prior to teaching the lesson, delivering the lesson, debriefing with the teacher or team, and coaching/mentoring the teacher teaching follow-up lessons.
• Identify instructional strengths of individual teachers and assist in identifying lead teacherss and model classrooms.
• Develop coaching plans, as needed, for teacherss not demonstrating student gains.
Instructional Specialist – Aligns instruction with curriculum to meet the needs of all students.
• Assist in the development of school-based assessment tasks that promote higher-order thinking skills for students.
• Facilitate the examination and assessment of whether student work meets the standards and assessment.
Curriculum Specialist -Provide assistance in blending content knowledge and knowledge of differentiated instruction.
Learning Facilitator – Designs collaborative, job embedded, standards-based professional learning.
• Plan, implement, and follow through with training including professional learning community (PLC) sessions based on results of both formal and informal surveys.
Data Coach – Ensures that learner achievement data drives instructional decisions at the classroom and school level.
• Assist the Principal and Leadership Team in the disaggregation of student performance data, by school and by teacher; and assessing instructional coaching needs of individual teachers.
School Leader – Works collaboratively with the school’s formal leadership to design, implement, and assess school change initiatives to ensure alignment and focus on intended results.
• Collaborate with the school leadership team to establish a school culture of trust, so that coaching is viewed in a positive light by teachers and a vehicle to assist teachers in improving their practice.
• Cultivate a culture that supports innovation and continuous improvement of teaching and learning.
Mentor – Increases instructional skills of the novice teacher and supports school wide inductional activities.
• Orienting and closely mentoring and monitoring all beginning teachers new to the school.
Resource Provider – Expands teachers’ use of a variety of resources to improve instruction.
Catalyst for Change – Creates disequilibrium with the current state as a lead to explore alternatives to current practice.
Learner – Models continuous learning, to keep current, and to be a thought leader in the school.
Accountability – Organize and document work via monthly activity report.
• documenting a majority of time spent in classrooms.
Too much information? Don't care. This is what I do. So you can see how my first day back may have been a little tiring. I work at both the traditional and the alternative education high schools in our community.
I have a really important tip for those of you returning to work after a traumatic event like surgery, cancer treatment, or personal loss. Don't do ANYTHING except go to work for the first week. I put off my workouts and my regular household chores for this first week. There's no way I can keep up with everything right off the bat, and neither can you. Luckily, I have a great friend who invited me over to decompress after my first day at work. We drank wine and chatted. This was the best therapy ever! I was actually unable to do those extra curricular activities that I would normally be working on. I highly suggest this strategy if you are an overachiever like me. I did, however, work on this blog post and do a tiny bit of art work. It's important to keep working toward my goals while making sure that I'm listening to my body.
Week one: go to work. Don't do anything else. Your body will appreciate you easing back into normal living. Take care of you, my friends!