I have spent a portion of my sabbatical thinking about career advancement and how to continue to grow in my career. I have framed this thinking based on Simon Sinek’s book Start with Why. One of the book’s main points is that you have to know your why to feel inspired at work, and in turn inspire others that work with you. So, with this in mind I drafted my why, which can also be thought of as my own vision statement. My why is:
“My vision is that all teachers are trained to give every student an individualized and high-quality learning experience that allows them to continually make progress in the curriculum, feel socially connected, and contribute in a meaningful way to society.” Since I have my “why” now, any career advancement or decision I make should be working towards this why. My husband who works in business says that I need to be the CEO of Kristina, and I need to put my mission and vision at the forefront and not side-step and do tasks that others want. This line of thinking also emphasizes putting my “why” first. I think for the majority of my career, thus far, I have been able to have this throughline with my “why” at the center, but have also done tasks for others outside of this throughline. I have been able to gradually build this from one single classroom to working with general education teachers in one school to then moving to the university and working with individuals wishing to pursue special education or general education licensure. Continuing to build in this manner is the career that I would find most fulfilling. I want to eventually work in a position/career where I work with teacher preparation programs nation-wide as they prepare high-quality educators to be ready to impact ALL student learning on the first day that they enter the classroom. I do a small-scale version of this as I evaluate programs, but I would like to stay working with universities longer than just the evaluation period. I am able to continuously evaluate and make improvement in the program that I oversee at my university, special education, but how do bring this to a larger scale? I think doing this type of work with all educator preparation programs in one university and then working at the state-level doing this work with all teacher-preparation institutes in the state, would be one way I can see this being initially scaled. This is a position, if it existed or if I could create it, would allow me to continue to have my “why” at the essence of the career advancement and choices that I make.
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February 2023
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