How will I make the world a better place?

Week 2 of #YourEduStory blog challenge for 2015 gives us a prompt of "How will I make the world a better place?".  I have thought about this for the entire week and struggled with finding something that I could do that would change the world.

When I was teaching I felt like I had a fairly large impact on my students and I knew some things I did in class made a difference in the lives of my 200 students.  But now, working at the district office I don't have a direct affect on students any longer.  Or do I?

As I began to write this I realized I may have a bigger impact on student's lives than I think in this position.  I don't see it day to day, students don't come up to me to tell me that I made a difference in their life, but decisions I make directly effect thousands of students each day in our schools.  While I used to be directly responsible for 200 students, now I am indirectly responsible for 21,000 students.  Thankfully it isn't just me - I work with many talented people that help me make decisions for the students in our district.  Sometimes I lose track of how the things I do in my day to day work filter out to all the kids in our district.

Here are a few things I did this week that make a difference:

• Taught 25 teachers Google Docs (~675 students)
• Helped order 500 Chromebooks for 12 classrooms (~300 students)
• Worked to get 200 Chromebooks for 5 classrooms (~180 students)
• Visited 6 classrooms to students online in their class (~160 students)
• Let a co-worker know I appreciate her hard work (who knows?!)

I didn't do any of those things on my own - I  had help with each one.  Even the last one took help from my family to allow me time to visit a co-worker at the hospital.  I see the hashtag of #BetterTogether on Twitter or G+ - and that is what I am going to focus on this year to make the world a better place.  I will ask for help when I need it and offer help when I can be of assistance.

That doesn't sound like much - especially when you compare it to what others may do - but for me, if I can make myself better each day and help those around me do the same I consider that a positive change.  We can't do things on our own...so I will do what I can to work with/for others.  If everyone did the same I think we really would do some amazing things to make the world a better place!