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My name is Heidi Hutchison and I currently serve as the Interim Assistant Principal, Lower School, Pre-Primary, as well as the Interim Service Learning Coordinator for Friends School of Baltimore.  I also am a full time wife of an incredibly supportive and loving husband and mom of two wonderful children. My journey into school leadership has been an exciting and wonderful one. I think how I became interested in leadership is best explained below in a piece I wrote for the University of Pennsylvania.


Have you
ever played house, or dress-up, or teacher as a child? I realized when I began playing leader of my school, that I was actually conducting my own adult version of playing administrator. During the last year, when I had an idea of how to make our school better but no power to affect change on a larger scale, I created what I thought we needed in order to further our growth, support our teachers, and prepare for the future. I created what I like to call my “fake wikispace” called FriendsConnectInspireSupport. This space would be a place for teachers to connect with each other and also find professional development resources that honor them as self-directed learners.  I also found myself attending the Connected Principals Twitter chats (#cpchat) and Lead Learner webinars, attended mostly by principals, superintendents and heads of schools. I realized that although I love teaching 5th grade, I wanted to be able to affect change on a larger scale. I realized I was on a new path.


My journey in becoming a self-directed learner and a connected educator truly began in 2011 during a professional development experience led by a company called the Powerful Learning Practice (PLP.) PLP taught me the importance of becoming a connected educator. The more I learned about creating a personal learning network (PLN) and trusting and honoring myself as a learner, the more passion I developed for being a change agent and leader in education. I began to realize the importance of modeling risk-taking and making mistakes for my students. I was able to cultivate relationships on a global scale and share those experiences with my students. I began attending as much professional development as I could on project based learning and I leaned on my PLN to help guide and support me. My students then began taking more risks with their own learning. They helped create and participate in global project based learning projects. We learned about our responsibility as global and digital citizens and helped lead the way for other teacher-learners and student-learners in our building and worldwide! 


To me, there has never been a more exciting time in education.  I believe passion can be fostered. I will even go so far as to say the behaviors of passion can be taught.  I recently took part in a Twitter chat called #Txeduchat and the question posed was, “Can passion be taught?” I responded,


Heidi Hutchison @HeidiHutchison
Follow @AngelaMaiers The behaviors of finding your passion= making mistakes+resilience+being curious+being  joyful can be taught! #txeduchat
9:43 PM - 13 Apr 2014


I believe this with all my heart. We need to be transparent when making mistakes as teachers and leaders. We need to be resilient because that is how we bounce back and try again. We need to be curious to learn more and we also need to be joyful. Life is short and there is so much joy to be had! Leading as a passionate administrator who models being a learner first in a digital age is my goal. I have a vision for my school to be a digital leader that provides relevant and authentic experiences for our learners, and our learners have something great to contribute to this world. Our school motto is, “The world needs what our children can do.” I believe the world needs what our teachers can do as well.  

Although I love teaching, I know I am ready to be an effective leader in the Independent School System.

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