Aim for the Moon!

What's the point of aiming at anything you know, with 100% certainty, you're going to hit?  Learning - REAL learning - the kind that hurts a little before it feels better - comes from ideation and iteration. Those are fancy words for the process of creating ideas that seem ridiculous at first, then trying, and trying again to make them become reality. This website, this blog, and this project were born from a collision of two projects:

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1. The Teacher Leadership Initiative: This project is a work of passion between three distinctly different organizations. The National Education Association (NEA), the Center for Teaching Quality (CTQ), and the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS) have partnered to seek out teachers who want to fulfill leadership roles within their schools or districts without leaving their jobs to become administrators. The 2014-2015 school year was the second pilot year of this project, and I was asked to participate. In the words of CTQ CEO Barnett Berry, “It’s time to blur the lines of distinction between those who teach in schools and those who lead them.”
2. Google Teacher Academy: The Google Teacher Academy (GTA) is a professional development experience that brings educators from around the world to collaborate for two days. United around the common theme of Google Apps for Education, participants of the academy are encouraged adopt Google's philosophy of "moonshot thinking," and iterate on their ideas within a supportive community of like-minded educators who want to make an impact.

Although I already knew my "moonshot project" long before either of these two things collided on my horizon, it wasn't until I was forced to put it on paper that it became abundantly clear what I needed to do:

Billings Public Schools is home to over 16,000 students and 3,500 staff members. As the largest school district in the state of Montana, Billings has the potential to set the tone for public education in our state. At the current time in Billings, no position exists in which someone who works for the district deals with Public Relations or Communication on behalf of the district. My goal is to tackle the some of the roles of this position and create a “grass-roots” movement to chip away at the years negativity.

And so, it's time for take off! Through this forum, I intend to share a few of the hundreds of positive things that occur in Billings Public Schools on a daily basis! Let's celebrate excellence in teaching, innovation in learning and the positive outreach toward a supportive community. To the moon!