Internship Log Reflection

This semester has brought on many new administrative responsibilities while learning how to continue to juggle my current responsibilities. At the beginning of this semester one of our school buses was involved in a bus accident. The accident was thankfully not our drivers fault but still required our complete and total attention for many weeks after the accident. As a school administrative team we experienced this situation for the first time as a team. We learned that as a team we work well together but unfortunately we have to also learn how to work with other county departments. This particular incident meant that I spent a large portion of time with our transportation department to strengthen our current policies and procedures.

I also spent some time this semester shadowing a high school principal. During my observation I was able to observe class changes, cafeteria duty, conduct content area observations and feedback and spent time discussing master schedules. What I was able to take away from this observation was that no matter the grade level (elementary, middle or high school) the educational logistics and operations are similar but specific to the grade levels. I asked the high school principal what her greatest day to day challenge is and she responded that her personnel challenges continue to be the area that requires the most of her attention.

The majority of my administrative experiences are experiences that I participate in within my current position. Every day I have AM bus duty, I monitor the SCA president who reads the morning announcements, handle classroom student discipline, handle bus student discipline, attend IEP meetings as the administrator designee, PM bus duty and PM daycare duty. Some new experiences I had was completing instructional walk-throughs with my principal, meeting with our gifted zone specialist and gifted zone teachers to discuss semester benchmark scores and ways to improve, met with classroom teachers to discuss SOL test security, SOL test schedule and SOL test procedures, and worked with my principal and associate principal to handle a school-wide lockdown due to a community threat.

During our final semester I’m hoping to have an opportunity to shadow a middle school principal. I will also be the Exceptional Education Resource Teacher at Tuckahoe elementary school for Summer Academy 2017. I’m looking forward to this opportunity as I’ve never worked in the western part of our district. I’m excited for the opportunity to work with new teachers, a new community and a new summer academy coordinator.