Educational Leader interview and Meeting Reflection

One of the assignments for this summer semester was to interview an educational leader about curriculum, their views on where it is headed and what they would like to see. I had the opportunity to interview Sharquinta Tuggle. She is a School Effectiveness Specialist with the Georgia Department of Education. In this position, she works with turnaround schools that are in the bottom 5% academically, out of all Title I schools. Within these schools she works with administrators to implement strategies, monitoring and training in their schools. I found the interview to be very insightful and interesting. Hearing how curriculum has evolved over the course of her career and listening to the push back that certain schools have about adopting and making time for training and strategies. After the interview I had the opportunity to sit in as she trained the ELA department on how to implement certain strategies and with the administration about planning for trainings for the upcoming year.

The ELA training helped me in a variety of ways, because I teach math and rarely pay attention to "ELA strategies. However, listening in and participating in their discussion helped me reflect on some of my own practice as well as how the to subjects can better support each other this upcoming fall.

The meeting with the administration was somewhat tense only because I could tell there were several things on the principal's mind all which were of importance and making sure that PD was scheduled was a daunting task. Even as a listener in the room many times I thought, " the tracking of that initiative will fall by the waist side." or " that initiative will go neglected til the last minute" The only reason I felt this way was because of the "extra effort that was going to have to be made in order to make sure it stays a priority. It made me realize and have a better understanding of the random emails that may come saying this needs to be turned in by the end of the week, I still don't like it...but I can empathize.

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