Stephanie Sandifer

Enhancing Educational Leadership: Integrating UX Design Principles for Impactful Learning Experiences

January 9, 2024January 9, 2024

Over the past year, I’ve had the opportunity to teach in our UX Design program. Revisiting my UXD experience, after many years serving in a variety of leadership roles across the education landscape, prompted me to think about how important UX Design principles are to the development and delivery of relevant, effective, and engaging learning experiences… Across the education landscape, integrating UX Design principles can transform how we approach teaching and learning. Here’s how: Incorporating UX Design principles into educational leadership isn’t just about improving systems and processes; it’s about creating a more empathetic, effective, and student-centered learning environment. By…

Leadership

Sea Worthy Leadership: How to Guide Your Team Through Uncharted or Stormy Waters

January 4, 2024January 9, 2024

Over the past 5 years I’ve experienced a couple of significant situations that challenged me as a leader. When our seas become stormy, how do leaders not only navigate but thrive through uncertainty? Here are my top strategies, honed from my personal experiences, to guide a team effectively: 1. Transparent Communication: The Cornerstone• Transparency Matters: Keep your team in the loop about changes and challenges. It builds trust and clarity.• The Power of Regular Updates: Combat rumors and align everyone through frequent, clear communication. 2. Empathy & Support: The Human Touch• Address Concerns: Change is unsettling. Show understanding and address team worries…

Innovation, Professional Learning

Reimagining Professional Learning: Applying Agile and Design Thinking

January 15, 2021January 9, 2024

Through my years of experience in education and technology, I’ve observed a pressing need to evolve the traditional models of professional development (PD), and have often worked hard to do just that at every opportunity. The standard, one-size-fits-all workshops are no longer sufficient. We need a paradigm shift, blending agile methodologies and design thinking to create more impactful and responsive PD experiences. The blend of agile methodologies and design thinking offers a pathway to more dynamic and effective professional learning. Reimagining PD requires leaders to champion teacher-centered design and continuous improvement. We must make space for learning that empowers. What…

On Our Ed Tech Coach Bookshelf

February 6, 2020May 26, 2020

In the summer of 2018 I joined my current district in the role of Director of Educational Technology. The department primarily supports work focused on providing professional learning for effective technology integration, but when I came on board this work was being done with a rather small team and no campus-based ed tech coaches. As a result, most of the professional learning work was only reaching the innovators and early adopters in our district. In order to build more capacity across the entire district, we needed a larger team that would include campus-based personnel. During my first year I presented…

Uncategorized

Wonderings About Learning Spaces…

January 29, 2020January 29, 2020

What do you know about your students?Do you know their stories?Do you know their inspirations, passions, dreams & aspirations?Do you know their challenges and concerns?Do you know what they are curious about and where they place their creative energy?Does the learning environment that they experience honor these things? What about yourself? Your story? Your inspirations, passions, dreams & aspirations?Your challenges and concerns?What are you curious about and where do you place your creative energy?How do the learning environments and the learning experiences that you are able to influence (or that you experience) honor these things for you and for your…

Uncategorized

Intentional Language & Trust — The Power of Words

May 30, 2019May 30, 2019

It has been nearly a year now since I stepped into a new role in a new district. There have been so many refreshing, engaging, challenging, and joyful things to share about this new role, but it’s kept me so insanely busy over these past 11 months that I’ve not had any time — despite my best intentions — to do some reflective blog writing. This evening I am challenging myself to jot down a few thoughts from my reflections on a conversation that I had earlier today in some training with our campus leaders. This won’t be a long…

Culture, Leadership

The Spaces We Create

May 16, 2018May 16, 2018

Reflecting on leadership, empathy, compassion, and kindness this morning… What kinds of spaces do we create where relationships — authentic, caring, empathetic, and loving relationships — are nurtured to support everyone’s growth and learning process? At what level — or how often — do we use our powers of empathy, imagination, creativity, and community to re-imagine those spaces and how we engage with one another in those spaces? If we find these spaces to not be authentically and powerfully nurturing, what blocks us from changing those spaces? I am also thinking about purpose — the purpose of the spaces…

Leadership, Professional Learning

Becoming a True Learning Person

October 11, 2017October 11, 2017

(Originally published on LinkedIn.) In one of his articles about “Learning Organizations,” Jim Collins presents the challenge to become a true “Learning Person”: How would your day be different if you organized your time, energy, and resources primarily around the objective of learning, instead of performance? For many people, their daily activities — what they do and how they go about doing it — would be dramatically changed. Indeed, despite all the buzz around the concept of the “learning organization,” I’m struck by how few people seem to have embraced the idea of being a true learning person. As educators who strive…

Doing What is Best for Students

September 15, 2017

(Originally published on LinkedIn.) Recently I’ve been hearing a lot of folks talking about “doing what is best for students.” I’ve even said it myself. In fact, the first time I heard something along these lines it was about 15 years ago in the context of comprehensive whole-school reform and the full statement was something along the lines of: Are we doing what is best for students, or what is easiest for adults? Over the past 15 years I have come to develop my own belief that some of what is best for students is also what is best for…

Innovation, Leadership

Does #Innovation Have a DNA? Some #Education Applications…

August 21, 2017

(Originally published on LinkedIn.) I recently stumbled across this blog post: Does Innovation Have a DNA? — and I immediately started to connect this with the work that we do in education. In the post, the author explains that prominent and influential business innovators (Jeff Bezos from Amazon, Steve Jobs from Apple, Marc Benioff from Salesforce.com) all share a common set of skills that enable them to create “disruptive innovations.” The author concludes that these skills are skills that anyone can develop within themselves: …the five skills of disruptive innovators: Questioning allows innovators to challenge the status quo and consider new possibilities; Observing…

Leadership, School Improvement

A View From the Balcony

August 19, 2017

(Originally published on LinkedIn.) In their book Leadership on the Line: Staying Alive Through the Dangers of Leading, Martin Linsky and Ronald A. Heifetz explain how leaders can easily fall into the trap of being so close to the work that they fail to see the bigger picture. It’s so easy to get caught up in all of the details — meetings with parents, classroom walkthroughs, discipline, leadership team meetings, off-campus meetings, etc. — that we lose sight of the bigger picture. Their solution for overcoming this pitfall is to step away from “the dance floor” and to place one’s self on “the…

Make Your Classroom Extraordinary

August 19, 2017August 19, 2017

A few years ago, immediately after Robin Williams passed away, I wrote a blog post titled “20 Timeless Ways to Make Your Classroom Extraordinary.” The post was inspired by Williams’ character John Keating from the movie Dead Poets Society, and the quote from the movie where Keating tells his students to seize the day: “…Carpe diem, seize the day boys, make your lives extraordinary…” A couple of years ago, for a variety of reasons, I decided to stop blogging for a while and in the process I pulled the old blog from the web. (In retrospect, not a great idea,…

Our Decisions & Actions Are Symbolic

August 18, 2017August 18, 2017

(Originally published on LinkedIn.) As someone with a background in the visual arts and art education, I know that there are so many important reasons for keeping the arts in our schools. Recently I came across a list created and posted by the National Art Education Association that I think addresses the key “lessons” that the arts teach our students: http://www.arteducators.org/advocacy/10-lessons-the-arts-teach I especially like #10: “10. The arts’ position in the school curriculum symbolizes to the young what adults believe is important.” As I read that reason I realized that the statement can be made about anything and everything we do in schools —…

Giving of Grace to One Another

August 18, 2017August 18, 2017

(Originally published on LinkedIn.) Recently I was browsing through a binder that I used when I was involved in some leadership training (focused on comprehensive school improvement / change leadership) and I came across the following quote from Patrick Dolan (author of Restructuring Our Schools): What we need, very often, more than anything else, is a “grace” with one another. This grace comes from understanding how difficult this business is, and from making the very best assumptions about people and their desire to change, understanding the reality of past experiences and the culture so often in place. It is hard…

Want Innovation? Ditch the Silos.

August 17, 2017August 19, 2017

(Originally published on LinkedIn.) Innovation. Buzzword of the day. We are all striving towards more innovation. We want more innovation in our schools, our classrooms, and across our districts. The problem is that innovation is not a program that can just be added in or layered onto existing district, school, or classroom cultures. Innovation emerges from a culture that fosters imagination and creativity. Unfortunately, district and school cultures that are overly bureaucratic, traditional, and silo-ed are not the kinds of cultures that foster imagination and creativity. At the very least, in order to create the type of culture that will lead to deep and meaningful…