There are also town hall meetings where parents and community members may come and share. Then the committees write up their individual reports. The whole committee comes together. (Sometimes you are flying to meet up) A committee chair summarizes that committee’s report to the others and so on and then discussion is held. Even though three different schools were visited it’s odd how often the reports can be very similar. The DoD chair and/or the DoE then makes suggestions or recommendations to the Director of DODEA. This is a very intense week. One must really be on your toes. You have to have prepared yourself for the school you are visiting. You have to try and bond with you committee mates quickly. I always loved doing the school visits for new ideas and new wording or teaching techniques…one can always learn. 1999 – 2000 District Teacher of the Year, Kaiserslautern , Germany VES Nothing to explain here…just what I did. As a teacher of the year, I went and did a lot of educational activities. The most up lifting was being asked to serve as a committee member for the New DODEA Strategic plan. We had a new Director now who was a real leader! The committee met two times in Washington DC a few months apart. Other Teachers of of the Year were there that I knew and Principals and Superintendents I knew from my EPTA time. We first started with the rewrite of DODEA’s Vision, Mission and Goal statements. Keep in mind, this is for our schools that serve the children of our military all around the world. No easy task. After many days we completed that and after much discussion at our next meeting the Director wisely (he was new to this) realized there was no way a Strategic plan was going to be created. He talked about how you look to the end of your Strategic plan and almost work backwards. You then have to figure out all the parts and pieces and where they all fit and go before you start. You ask many questions…he said , we’ve done a lot of talking today but not a lot of questions. Remember to ask questions! When I was the PDK President for the one year, I had a friend who organized trips…nice trips. She used to go to Russia a lot…Moscow and St. Petersburg. A special Russian guide lady there became her close friend. So with Katie (my friend) and Lena (Russian friend) we organized an educational trip to Russia over our Spring Break. The trip was a week, 7 days. We toured all days but one when we visited Russian Schools. Elementary people went to an Elementary School and High School people went to a High School. Middle School people could choose where they wanted to go. That night we hosted a buffet dinner at our hotel for any teacher from either school that wanted to attend. For those that did attend (there were quite a few) we sponsored them with a 1 year membership in Phi Delta Kappa International. 2002 – 2003 President PDK Organizing skills got put to use here. The planning for this trip took nearly a year. 45 PDK members went on this trip. On a side note a gentleman who worked in the DODEA Germany Area office used this trip and the memberships of the Russians to help get himself appointed to the PDK National Board. Yes, he thanked me for sponsoring this.
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