<grimace>I'm going to my first administrators' meeting!</grimace>

I guess I have a real job now...no more teaching (unless you count teaching teachers), but plenty of meetings. Now that I'm the district's technology director, I get to go to the weekly "Administrators' Meeting" that our superintendent holds. Fortunately, I really like all of the building principals and central office big wigs, so I'm hoping they won't be too painful.

What I do wonder about, though, is making the transition from affable teacher to administrator who actually has to evaluate these folks. I'm hoping for the best, but when it comes time to decide which schools get technology money, which principals are doing a solid job of integrating technology into their workflows, and which buildings/teachers are doing the best job of using tech effectively in the classroom, I think I'll have my work cut out for me.

Job number 1 today? Explain why several technology purchase orders haven't been approved as we move to centralize our purchasing process, i.e., tell them they're losing some autonomy. It doesn't mean the buildings won't be funded adequately (or at least fairly, relative to scarce resources), it just means a cultural shift. It also means some delays as I get my head around just how much we have to spend and where it can go.

Already, I feel much more acutely the concerns of the taxpayers, parents, and town leaders; there is a big picture that administrators and techies at the building level can't always see. In fact, in our district, no one has bothered looking at the big picture for a very long time. That's my job! Woo hoo!

I'll let you know how it goes tomorrow.