The Gifts of Education: Project Management and Consulting

This post returns to my series called The Gifts of Education, where I reflect on skills I have gained over my 12+ years of experience in education. Recently, I have been reflecting on how my experiences have given me strong skills in project management and consulting - areas I am aiming to pursue in my next chapter. My time as a classroom teacher laid the foundation for these skills - backwards planning a math unit in collaboration with a team of teachers required an immense amount of organization and planning, not to mention the ability to remain flexible as conditions change. This served me well as I embarked on larger-scale projects in later roles, all requiring multi-department coordination, communication, and collaboration.
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After teaching, I had the opportunity to engage in several projects as a Professional Learning Specialist. In this role, my main responsibility was to help improve the quality of professional learning being provided by departments in the division of Student Equity and Opportunity. Much of this required me to collaborate with subject-matter-experts (SMEs) that were presenting content far outside my area of expertise. For example. I worked with the nursing department and vividly remember the training on feeding tubes for school-based nurses (I also remember how queasy it made me). I enjoyed consulting with a wide variety of departments to determine which components of the professional learning experience needed the most support. From designing an automated certificate solution to co-designing a full series of sessions, I enjoyed determining what each team needed and helping them find a sustainable solution.

​Looking back, I realize what I loved about this job was the same thing I loved about teaching - I got to build strong relationships with folks and co-create something meaningful together with tools from my skills tool belt. Sometimes, the project would even require me to build more skills, which made me love it that much more. For example, I worked on a division-wide Bias and Equity Hybrid training series that increased my understanding of DEI work. I coordinated a division-wide, gamified Google training in collaboration with another team that showed me how to effectively coordinate and collaborate across an organization. Looking back on this role, I am most impressed that I accomplished all of these things in the span of less than one year, when my team was effectively dismantled and another opportunity came my way.

As a Digital Coach, I had the unique opportunity to support the launch of the 1:1 Chromebook Initiative for my district but providing intense support for a major high school. While I primarily focused on the people-side, I also collaborated with those supporting device management and repair to ensure a seamless experience for staff and students. Over the span of two years, I worked with the school's leadership team to ensure technology could be used to compliment and accelerate the school's vision for learning. I provided individual teacher coaching, professional development, and guiding resources to ensure we capitalized on the platforms available to us from the district. We were able to create a blueprint for meaningful technology integration that I later used to launch another high school with their 1:1 Chromebook initiative. Coming back to this school years later, many of the foundations laid are still rock solid.

At the height of the pandemic, I used the blueprint I created with my previous schools to launch two separate Learning Management Systems (one for grades K-5 and one for 6-12). Through a human-centered approach, I coordinated support for staff, students, and parents across the district. We created video tutorials, resource documents, and troubleshooting documentation in a matter of months. I established regular lines of communication across teams to ensure everyone had the information they needed to provide quality support. Additionally, I included departments who provide specialized services to students early in the process to ensure we had accounts and guidance for all staff involved in a student's education. We ensured all parent-facing videos and resources were translated into all the languages supported by our district. As new ideas to support each platform better were imagined, we made them a reality. It was a massive undertaking and I'm proud of what we were able to pull off as a team.

On the technical side of this role, I was also able to coordinate and collaborate with vendors, specialists, and analysts to support the technical side of the platforms. We had three system integrations that needed to be managed and supported. With increased use of each integration, it was important to iterate on the implementation of each process to ensure support sustainability. For example, we tripled the number of schools utilizing our gradebook passback system. We needed to ensure we could adequately support school onboarding and troubleshooting with the same quality and no additional help. I developed an onboarding course designed to better check for user understanding and created additional resource videos to support staff. This ensured the number of issues experienced did not increase with the number of schools accessing the integration. I am proud to say that we were successful with this endeavor the documentation we created is still used to support schools today.

Similarly, I had the opportunity to collaborate with a small group to improve the user experience for the integration between our LMS and HR credit system during this role. The district went from few folks using the system integration, to requiring it for all Academics division professional development starting in fall 2020. At the beginning, the number of incidents coming to the IT desk was overwhelming. By combining our collective expertise across each system, our collaborative committee created solutions that ensured a smooth experience for participants and facilitators. Within three events, the number of incidents was negligible and we decided to disband our working group as we did not know what more we could accomplish.
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Across all of these roles, I found that what I enjoyed most was the moments where I became obsolete - When my students started running the classroom. When folks could create their own certificates and design their own high-quality sessions. When a teacher could generate a tech-enhanced lesson independently. When a school no longer needed support with an LMS strategy. When processes began to run themselves. When the students became the teachers. This level of capacity-building is what I love most. I am excited to take my skills and passions with me to the next part of my journey. Just like consulting and project management has always been a part of my work in education, I imagine education will always be a part of my work in consulting and project management. My experiences are a gift I will continue to carry with me wherever I go.