You are on page 1of 5

EA 701/702: Internship Experience

Reflective Paper: Oakland University



Laurie Doner

Wednesday, June 25, 2014

























When asked to reflect on my year as a student, teacher leader, and moving into the
role as an administrative intern, it certainly has been a journey. Going back to school
after being away from it since my Masters degree had its challenges. I felt pressure all
the way around from trying to be a good student, teacher, mother, and wife. As a teacher
leader, I was trying to bring into the classroom and building this new found knowledge
that I was gaining from being a Galileo Leader and all the wonderful possibilities that it
brought, as well as, ideas from my Oakland University classes that would benefit my
classroom and colleagues. As an administrative intern, I was confronted with challenges
on a daily basis and I felt the need to do more and provide support for our school,
students and teachers. I was liking these new found roles of the 2013-2014 school year.
Indeed it was challenging, but it was the breath of life I had been looking for since all the
changes that have occurred in education. I knew, for me, this was going to be a year of
tremendous growth and excitement. Both of these, I had been longing for, for awhile.
I was fortunate enough to welcome, at the start of the school year, my former student
teacher and our building sub for four years as one of my 5
th
grade partners for the
upcoming school year. She was hired when the original girl in her position took a job in
the West Bloomfield District, which freed up a space at the start of the school year, so my
principal had an opportunity to hire her to fill this vacancy. The entire building felt so
happy that she was FINALLY part of the Snow School staff. This was years in the
making!!!! I was lucky to become her mentor and share 18 years of teaching experience
with her.
I have served as a school leader for quite a few years at Snow School. This year was
no different although I felt quite a bit more responsibility and I had to learn how to
balance all the demands while teaching full-time. Due to the fact that I was a Galileo
Leader, I was asked to present information quite a few times at our staff meetings. That
really gave me a chance to see what it felt like to take on a leadership role in a different
way. All of my leadership roles up to this point, were not presenting at the building level,
the most I would do was speak to answer questions or provide insight if asked to. This
was a whole different role, one that I was definitely not as familiar with. The preparation
on many levels was extensive. As an administrative role, you had to consider your
audience and the reactions you might receive and plan out to the minute how the delivery
of information would go and what activities you wanted to accomplish in the time
provided. I can say that presenting to children is so many ways easier than presenting to
a group of adults, especially your colleagues. I dont feel I am still very good at it. It gets
me very nervous, even though I know the information I am presenting it is that feeling
that judgment is occurring and the thoughts of Will they still like me when this is all
over?. I am working on overcoming my fears. I wish I could say that I am a master at
presenting but it does not come easy for me and it is a work in progress that is for sure.
I have been asked to serve on many district committees this year and take leadership
roles in them. As a Galileo Leader, the rest of the group and myself, plan the induction
programming for the district for the next two years. These meetings are with large
groups of people from across the entire district and we provide in-services for them. We
work on providing meaningful activities that encourage growth their first few years in the
district. I have also been asked to serve as a spokesperson for our school on the recent
piloting of the districts elementary Gradebook that is done on the computer. They use it
in the middle school and high school, but it has just been recently introduced to the
elementary schools and our school is piloting it. It consisted of four very intense
meetings to discuss the implementation and what needed to be changed as we went
through this process. I had a very significant role in the first year of our school pilot. I
was pleased how we moved forward and into workable agreements for all involved. The
last committee that I am serving on in an administrative role is that of our newly
established mentor roles from the high school. I am very proud to say that we are using
our feeder high school to provide support to our elementary students who are on the Tier
2 level of intervention in the RtI process. This program is just beginning and we are
working on developing it into something more. The high school is even considering a
leadership class for the students who come over to the elementary school, so they would
work inside our school 3 days a week and work with their leadership teacher two days a
week. We have already met to explore the possibilities of developing this wonderful
program. This program really excites me!
I am excited for the possibilities for next year. I had an opportunity to talk with the
staff about developing the culture in our building. I would like to have an opportunity to
go back and revisit that with the staff and see about developing the culture even further. I
am also going to be the leader of our PBIS program for our building. This will be a very
challenging role. I did not sit on the initial committee of implementation of our PBIS
matrix and all the things that go with that. I have a lot of learning to do with this and I
am exited to see if we, as a staff, can create a bigger buy-in to build it stronger than we
have in the past. It ties in nicely to the mentor program I am currently working on. I
would also like to see us work on reading the Leader and Me book within our building
and seeing where that might lead us, along side our current work with PBIS. I know
there is a grant you can write in February to get funding to become a Leader and Me
School. I would like to write the grant alongside some of my colleagues this year. It can
only make our building an even better place to be. I have many new roles I am taking on
this year, on top of the roles I already have in the building. I hope I can continue to
maintain the positive energy I have always had. I love what I do and I believe it shows. I
have built relationships with people in the building, so that when I get up and address the
staff there is a sense of respect there. I will continue to foster the collaborative culture I
always have had within our building. I would like to utilize sub-committees more to give
everyone a chance to experience teacher leadership. We all are leaders in some way and
if you can get people to feel valued and foster relationships and build them up they will
eventually start to take on even small roles as teacher leaders.
For my future, I can see me moving out of the classroom and into an administrator
role in some capacity. I could see myself at the university level, with incoming freshmen,
making sure their first experience at the college is positive and they stay on track and are
successful. I also could see myself connecting the community and the school district
together in some way. I know the possibilities are endless. Those are my interests
currently. I love people and connecting with them. So putting me in a visible spot where
I can make those connections and foster key relationships would probably suit me best.
This has been an amazing year for me. I have grown tremendously and I am so happy
that this is the direction my life has taken. Next year will be even better than this year!

You might also like