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What's Driving You?
Dear Colleagues:
One of the many things my parents taught me growing up was the importance of always striving to do my best. As a teacher and now as a chief education officer, it was and still is my goal to create the finest opportunities possible for children to learn and grow. When I taught, it was with the mindset that whatever I taught, however I taught it, that it had to be done in a way that I would have wanted as a student and how I would want my own children to be taught.
Knowing this is my foundation and the complexities of leadership, as a chief education officer, I realized leadership requires flexibility and discernment to develop and to define the type of leadership for the task and the people you are leading. I continually ask the staff to find their passion and to work as hard as possible to develop experiences and goals that can help each person achieve. It is important to me that they are doing their best to maintain high quality and to meet the expectations our school community has come to anticipate from New Jersey educators.
Each year as a chief education officer I have tried to develop a theme just like we have at NJASA. One of my favorites was “What’s Driving You?” With that theme we asked all of our staff to truly explore what drives them – to find that place of passion for the work we do and then to pursue it aggressively.
Professional development is a significant part of that process. It is our responsibility to provide staff with high-quality professional development programs on the pivotal issues in education to help them succeed and in turn have our students be successful. It is also important that we feed ourselves professionally and seek every opportunity for growth and networking.
I can confidently tell you from my vantage point of being a chief education officer for 25 plus years, all the NJASA Professional Development programs have that added value - Networking!
The opportunity for a central office administrator to discuss pressing educational challenges with chief education officers from a variety of district types across New Jersey is invaluable! As well as the chief education officer interacting with fellow education leaders from all regions of the state is very unique.
NJASA programs cover the issues - from technology to security to leadership and more - that help you, as educational leaders pilot the helm of one of the best public education systems in our country - New Jersey’s Public Schools. Following are this month’s offerings. Please take advantage of our Association and have a great month!
Sincerely,
Dr. Scott McCartney, NJASA President 2016-2017
