One step closer to having everything I need to be an administrator. This past week I started my ILD (Instructional Leadership Development/PDAS (Professional Development and Appraisal System) Training. It's a lot of work for one week. I was able to earn 36 1/2 CEU's in one week. I honestly thought I was going to be bored to tears. Well, there were no tears, but there was a ton of boredom. There were so many things a that were repetitive that if if they weren't repetitive then the classes would be three days instead of five. We also went really slow with the material. There was review of what I did in my master's classes that would take up an hour of time. Most of the people in the class are in the last semester of their admin degrees and everyone else in the class was either working closely with their administrators or in an administrative internship within their districts so the review, I felt, was unnecessary. All in all I learned more about evaluation and how to check if lesson plans and lessons being presented are in alignment with school, district and state curriculum, if tests are up to par or to far above the teaching in the class and if a teacher is really bringing their students to the higher order thinking of Bloom's and Erikson's Taxonomies. I am feeling a little more comfortable with evaluating teachers and their lessons even though I am not well-versed in their subject content.
What else this week? Institute is, as always, and incredible experience. I don't know what I would do without it. I have been taking institute classes since I was 18 and have learned so much from them. There are a lot of people out there that don't attend institute because they seem to think that every class is the exact same. Well, to those people, I have taken Book of Mormon classes at least three times and there is not one thing that was a repeat. The great thing about these classes is that there is no script to follow, the teachers really are inspired by the Spirit to fit the needs of the classes they teach. I am grateful for the the institute program and the things it has taught me throughout these past nine years. It has been a great blessing in my life.
I also re-realized that those big parties that everyone gets invited to aren't my thing. Last year I started going to more parties and thought I could get use to them, but after last night, I remembered why I don't like them. I really am more of a small group intimate setting type of person. I like dinners with close friends or sitting at the ice cream place or cafe in great discussion with others. I am all about fun times with great friends in the right setting for me.
All-in-all, this week was pretty uneventful. It's nice to not be surrounded by drama all the time. I can always go for the uneventful.