I am an AACPS:<\/strong> Employee<\/p>\n \u201cShow me a leader, a scholar, a changemaker — and I’ll show you an educator who inspired such glory.\u201d When I penned these words late last year, it was in celebration of two remarkable teachers whose pedagogical and mentorship styles have been responsible for shaping my own. Still, reflection, powerful phenomena that it is, has revealed to me just how relevant this aphorism is to not only the educators who have poured into my purpose, but also the leaders who have paved pathways for it to be made manifest.\u00a0 My experiences as an AACPS educator have been shaped by these pathways \u2013 by the pathfinders who identified my potential, and then catapulted me into arenas where others might do the same.<\/p>\n I met my first AACPS Pathfinder in the very same year that I decided to become an educator. Having already attained a Baccalaureate in English, I began to seek the alternative avenues of certification that would lead me to Pat Gronkiewicz, coordinator of the AA County Resident Teacher Certification Program and, ultimately, a major factor in my decision to serve AACPS. It was her persistent proclamation of my gifts, many of which I had not yet myself realized, that planted the seed for my eventual hire at South River High School–a community where I would encounter a series of AACPS pathfinders, eager to impart their wisdom and experiences onto budding leaders, much like the one whom I, still unbeknownst to me, was destined to become.<\/p>\n In the final conference of my first year of teaching, Principal William Meyers challenged me to pursue leadership roles throughout South River, as he glanced around his office, symbolic of the school itself, and confided, \u201cI\u2019m not sure how long you\u2019ll be here.\u201d Pivotal pathfinder that he was, he made this gesture to help me to see that while my potential began in the classroom, it would likely end in fields far beyond.\u00a0 While it took me years to fully accept his message, I followed the trails of opportunity that he and other leaders identified for me–whether it was Fran Magiera, who inspired an English teacher like me take a pioneering role in a STEM magnet program; or Deb Lesko, who first affirmed my ability to be a \u201cMaster Teacher\u201d; or Carol Ann McCurdy, who started \u2013 and has graciously not yet stopped–talking to others about my abilities; or Dr. Maureen McMahon, who has thrust me, ready or not, into more opportunities than I can number; or, most recently, Mary Tillar, who constantly plants seeds of wisdom into my reflective practice while patiently waiting for me to uncover my own path. It is clear that these pathfinders, like so many others throughout AACPS, have mastered a powerful axiom made popular by Thomas J. Peterson, III: \u201cLeaders don\u2019t create followers. They create more leaders.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" “My experiences as an AACPS educator have been shaped by these pathways \u2013 by the pathfinders who identified my potential, and then catapulted me into arenas where others might do the same.” –Jasmine Coleman<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1001013,"featured_media":7386,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_expiration-date-status":"saved","_expiration-date":0,"_expiration-date-type":"","_expiration-date-categories":[],"_expiration-date-options":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[130,132,147],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7395","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-aacps_story","category-employee_stories","category-south_river_stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/aacpsschools.org\/development\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7395","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/aacpsschools.org\/development\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/aacpsschools.org\/development\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aacpsschools.org\/development\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1001013"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aacpsschools.org\/development\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7395"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/aacpsschools.org\/development\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7395\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8293,"href":"https:\/\/aacpsschools.org\/development\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7395\/revisions\/8293"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aacpsschools.org\/development\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7386"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/aacpsschools.org\/development\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7395"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aacpsschools.org\/development\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7395"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aacpsschools.org\/development\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7395"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}