Christina AndersonFooladjoush

I attribute my success to having a clear vision of what I wanted to be able to do and really just being willing to put in the time and work to get to where I wanted to be. I knew I wanted to be an administrator when I started being a teacher, so I was willing to move classrooms every year and teach something new every year, because I felt like that would help me be a better leader. It took 9 years of learning experience to feel like I was ready for the next step, but just being willing to take the small steps that led to big gains.

The best career advice I've received is 'Measure What Matters.' I think sometimes we wrap ourselves around what we think is happening within our organizations, and if we're not measuring it, we don't actually have evidence of its success, or if it needs to be altered to have better results.

I would say that this is a passion job, it's not a paycheck job, so make sure that you keep your passion in the forefront. Remind yourself of it on the hard days, because there are hard days, but as long as you remain focused on your purpose, it is well worth it. I think why this job thrives is because we know that it matters, and that's also why it's so hard. I also think it's important for women to understand that these roles are not just for men, and that women can be who women are. We don't have to act like men in this role. We can be really strong leaders with our own personal strengths and values.

I think one of our biggest challenges is keeping up with what we know and being able to put what we know is best in our systems into practice, because there's so many moving parts all the time. For example, like science of reading, we know that is best practice instruction, but how do we catch up with that knowledge as far as training our teachers, getting the materials, and being prepared to deliver it in the way that is gonna help our students the most.

I think integrity in this job is probably the most important, because we are really reliant on establishing relationships with families and students. I know that culture can eat strategy for breakfast, so we want to make sure that we have a culture established on integrity so our families trust us, our students trust us, and our teachers know that we're doing things to move in the right direction, because when you're working with people, that's probably the number one factor.