 I started my teaching career outside of the international model and when I entered the internationalist model of course I came with those I'd say preset beliefs and structures that were mostly traditional because my background was British Caribbean and so things like scoring student work that curriculum itself was very traditional and there's a lot of like wrote for example wrote memorization skills that geared students to be able to read write listen speak but to the end of achieving a particular score is very quantitative the international models helped me to move from that traditional thinking to a more qualitative and more student-friendly and more student-driven focus so for example being able to engage students in expressing their own voice thinking about equitable resources thinking about what's happening in our world and how to prepare students to be able to do that successfully beyond just passing a particular exam other ways I think in terms of developing my own voice being able to relate to other other educators being able to develop myself my own thinking my own critical thinking skills and not seeing myself just as a teacher but as a leader as you know a professional who is also responsible for developing the school so I'm not there just to comply with our complete particular set of responsibilities but I'm also there to help develop the school and what we hope to achieve for our students when we're looking at deeper learning the relationships you know the meaningful learning that we're doing with students it was difficult at the beginning because we had to really start with adult culture with teachers and staff and well bringing them on board with the changes with new tech that was not easy was something that took time but after five years of that we have an outstanding adult culture where when we bring new staff in it's a little bit easier to onboard them I was also given a lot of support on changing the status quo whatever change needed to happen whatever change I felt needed to happen my principal supported me and I see my big picture professional development whether it was from the people that came to the school or the conferences was about changing our students lives changing our school changing our community and being a part of being a part of the world and being responsible for that like owning that whatever you do it has a consequence that doesn't just affect you and so you know and that meant in math class and that meant after school as well