Most Effective Leader:
             I have only been teaching for a couple years but have already had the privilege of working with several great leaders.  For this post I am going to talk about the principal at our school.  While I may not agree with every decision she makes, I do feel that she is changing our school for the better.  See I took my first full time position last year at a priority school in my county.  This just happened to be the first year for this principal as well.  She bid on and accepted this job knowing the struggles she was going to encounter and the obstacles the school needed to overcome in order to move above the priority status.  Since I started the same time she did, I have not witnessed as many changes as many of the other teachers, because I did not work with previous administrators.  However, to hear other teachers talk about the way the school was ran in previous years, I am thankful for her changes.
           There are several things that she has changed this year.  The main ones. are common planning across grade levels, weekly PLC's, technology integration, data collection, and school wide involvement.  The school is very large and up until this year all grades had different planning times.  This caused problems because grades had no time to meet and discuss common activities or lessons.  We are now able to work together to make sure all of third grade is on the same page with our students.  We meet with her once a week and discuss activities we are doing within our classes, and what we are doing to help all our students not just our lower level students.  Our goal is for all students to progress, even those who are already above where they need to be.  We need to catch up those that are behind, while encouraging those on and above to progress as well.  In order to do this we must collect data on all students and track their progressions.  In our weekly meetings we talk as a whole grade level and discuss how we can reach our students.  We help each other as teachers and administrators to come up with ideas that will work in our classrooms.  Overall I think she is trying to get us to understand that as individuals we will struggle to make a difference, but if we work together as a whole, then we can accomplish anything.

Leadership Skills Assessment:
             I scored a 63 on this assessment, which I have to admit kind of shocked me.  My highest score was in Motivating People to Deliver the Vision where I scored a 9 out of 10.  This makes sense because I truly feel that even during the most trying and stressful times I try to see the future results.  I try to keep my fellow teachers hopeful of what the future will bring, and that all the changes we are trying to implement now are to help with that.  My lowest sore was in self confidence where I scored a 5 out of 10.  I think this is because even though I try to keep a positive attitude I more often then not feel as if I am failing my students.  Many times I feel that I am trying to do too much with them, and that they are not nearly as successful as I wish.  I always second guess my lessons and activities planned and ask others what they are doing.  I need to be more confident in my abilities and my opinions because when it comes down to it, I am the one who knows what my students need and what they are capable of.

Chapter 3:
1. Love Your Employees:  This can be summarized as trusting and supporting your staff unconditionally.  Helping them to full fill their goals and the goals of the school while maintaining and or achieving self satisfaction.  Allowing them lead way to explore new ideas and become innovative in their teachings.
2.  Connect Peers With Purpose: This in my opinion is one of the most important, because everyone must feel as if they have a voice.  This secret to change allows teachers to have choices in the way the school is running.  To have their input listened to and taken seriously is key to a successful school.  After all, teachers are the ones working one on one with the students therefore, they should have some say as to how they implement ideas within the school.

Chapter 4:
        While I do feel that social media could be useful in middle school and high school, I do not feel that it is as pertinent in elementary school.  That being said I do feel that every year students progress more with technology and they seem to be learning more and more at a younger age.  I have four children and all four have access to social media.  They all have IPAD's with internet access and facebook accounts.  While many people object to this I do monitor their accounts and have several parental controls set up.  I absolute love when I am struggling to figure out something and one of my children can show me how to solve the problem.  This to me is key because this is the way society is going.  Our kids must be involved with technology because it will always be there.  Because of this I feel that social media is very important for students to know about and use on a daily basis.  the more they have access to it now, I believe the more successful they will be in the future when technology becomes in more dominant in our daily lives.