Day in the life of
Director of Academic Innovation – Laura Spencer, Ed. D.
My typical day is never typical, which is what I love about it. I spend part of my day working on compliance requirements for both state and federal education laws, such as LCAP (Local Control and Accountability Plan), SARC (School Accountability Report Cards), and SPSA (School Plan for Student Achievement). I also oversee the IT Department, so part of my day is troubleshooting technical issues and responding to technology requests from staff and students.
Most of my day, however, is spent meeting with teachers and academy leaders to develop creative and engaging methods to teach content to students in a way that both maximizes learning and connects to real-world applications. This requires researching pedagogy and EdTech tools and looking at our student achievement data so that we can write our own curriculum for middle and high school students, which sometimes takes weeks or months to fully develop. As a member of the leadership team, I am also responsible for planning teacher and staff professional development, which can sometimes take up an entire day on my schedule.
Here’s an example of my day…
Today I started by meeting with the IT Department to see how we were progressing on setting up Chromebooks for our online state assessments. Since they’ve never been proctored remotely before, there’s a lot of extra setup and confusion. We met for 30 minutes to review questions being asked by teachers and to troubleshoot an issue with cameras not working for some students.
After that, I met with our school counsellor to work on our graduation ceremony plan. We outlined the components of the ceremony and discussed deadlines to get student submissions for speeches.
From there, I had a meeting with an outside vendor that we contract with for staff and parent social-emotional workshops. I shared with him how I felt this year’s roll out went and discussed how I want to see the program expand into next year so that he can develop a proposal for me.
I then looked at our social media posts scheduled for release next week and modified the content, looked for relevant hashtags, and asked for additional content that highlighted our students.
I mentor two of our school administrators so I had one hour meetings with each of them. In these meetings, we look at student academic progress and discuss next steps to closing achievement gaps and providing meaningful curriculum opportunities. These are weekly meetings meant to foster leadership development amongst our newer administrators.
I spent my lunch time with students who are part of our Kindness Club. We talked about ways to encourage students to do their best on the state assessment, and also shared stories about moments in our lives when we felt a sense of pride. The students are always a source of joy!
I then spent 30 minutes helping a teacher decide on an appropriate project that could demonstrate learning in her class. Students are struggling to engage with the content, so we were brainstorming high energy projects that might encourage participation. We decided to have students create videos that teach a concept they already know. Because TikTok is so popular these days, we thought they might like the freedom to use whatever video editing tools they choose. It is also more fun than a live presentation to the class!
After that, the afternoon was focused on compliance requirements. One of the annual reports (LCAP) to the state is due in June and must be approved by multiple stakeholders before then. So I spent quite a bit of time analyzing our four annual goals, as well as student academic progress data, to determine where we met the goal and where we still need progress in meeting the goal. I then had to develop action items for the 21-22 school year that will help us get closer to achieving all four goals and assign budget parameters to each action item.
I ended the day by converting some student testimonial videos into cartoon versions using Powtoon. This preserved student privacy while still allowing their story to be shared with our stakeholders on Instagram and Facebook.
My responsibilities are centred around a few key areas:
- Responsible for the implementation of learning initiatives and innovative pedagogies that meet the challenges of teaching and learning in a 21st century learning environment, as well as direct and oversee the integration of technology.
- Develop curriculum and select technology-oriented learning tools for the independent study environments.
- Develop and lead professional learning on teaching and learning strategies, as well as instructional technology integration.
Pros
- It’s never the same work so it’s never boring
- I get to be part of almost every aspect of the school’s day-to-day functions
- I lead change so that education gets better for our students
- I get to mentor people and see them mature as teachers and administrators
- I have a lot of freedom to create my daily schedule. And as teachers know, just having the freedom to use the bathroom when needed is a luxury many in education don’t have!
Cons
- I don’t have a lot of personal connections with students anymore. In order to be a good educational leader, you have to be in tune with who your students are and what they need. So I have to find ways to build those connections, such as joining in during their clubs and extracurriculars.
- There is no set schedule, so I have to decide what needs to be done and how I can best do it
- I often work 10-12 hour days, and many evenings, so flexibility is always needed when making plans
- A lot of people lean on me for help making decisions and completing projects so I am often stretched in a lot of directions at once
- It can be a lot of busy work, so I had to install an elliptical pedal machine under my desk to make sure I don’t just sit all day!
