One of the biggest reasons I became a teacher is because of my love of learning and my passion about sharing new ideas with others. In my 3 years at ASB I have engaged in several opportunities to learn more about my profession and share ideas with colleagues. My personal growth activities have included attendance at 2 Near East Schools Association (NESA) conferences, The European League of Middle School Educators (ELMLE) conference, and ASB's own tech conference, ASB Unplugged. These have proven to be wonderful learning experiences allowing the chance to share ideas with other international educators and bring several great ideas back to my colleagues and my own classroom. I have also used these conferences as a way to share my own expertise in certain areas through formal presentations at both the ELMLE conference and ASB Unplugged.
As a member of the ASB staff, I have also taken on several responsibilities to help support the mission and goals of the school. I have been a part of the Insructional Team for two years where we have worked on topics such as professional development funds and support for faculty, accreditation documents and analyzing faculty survey, and creating a vision and providing input into our next 5 year strategic plan.
I also took the lead in my first year at ASB on an initiative to explore the options of revising our math standards and benchmarks to reflect the most current research and data around successful math curriculum. I attended a conference with AERO consultant Erma Anderson where myself and another colleague were responsible for collecting data and ideas to bring back to ASB in order to make decisions about whether we needed to pursue this as a school initiative. We worked with our Assistant Superintendent to put together presentations for faculty, collect survey data and use the results to form a committee charged with developing new units for our elementary math curriculum and designing appropriate PD for our faculty to support this work. This has proven to be a very successful initiative and has brought great excitement and clarity to our ES teachers and has provided a platform for great conversations about math and best practice at ASB.
In my second year I also stepped into the role of department head for our 6-12 math department which involved a great deal of work on curriculum and many valuable discussions surrounding the revision of our scope and sequence to best support students in this international environment and help to strengthen our curriculum through the use of numerical and anecdotal data. This has opened the doors to many various opportunities to be involved in conversations around best practice, curriculum design, and assessment both with my department and with heads of other departments school wide.
I have grown tremendously as a teacher and as a leader in these past 3 years at ASB and have provided a great deal of service to the mission of the school and to my colleagues as well as taken a great deal away for my own personal development and improvement as a professional.