Speaker: Sheila Palmer
How did you find your way to your current role at K12 Coalition?
Sheila Palmer: Before joining K 12 Coalition, I was an educator in schools. I started my career as a teacher, became a teacher leader, assistant principal, and then a principal. Eventually I decided that I wanted to have a more far reaching impact. And so I decided to join the group as an instructional consultant. In 2020 the group gave me the opportunity to not only work with school districts and schools across the country but also to really focus in on my passion of strategy work from there. I became a senior instructional consultant and then transitioned into my current role of the Director of Equity and Learning, really ensuring that all of our products, services and approaches with schools and school districts are grounded in an equity lens.
Why are core values important to your work at K12 Coalition?
Sheila Palmer: The core values are important to the work in my role, but they're really important to the work and everyone's role across the organization, they provide a foundational set of principles and values for us to live by, to work by and also to design and create by when we're designing transformational learning experiences for our partners. When we're designing products, when we're designing services, we keep these values in mind and also when we're working together um and working with each other, we keep these values in mind as well. So for example, in my role, it's really important that I'm thinking about the advancing equity and all that we do value both with the systems and structures that I'm creating internally as well as how we are designing our products that go out to schools and school communities that we're thinking about equity, culturally, responsive pedagogy when we're writing our curriculum, when we're designing our programming like r summer school, and when we're thinking about our approach to consulting and schools, another example would be creating a positive culture, ensuring that when we're going into school communities, we're really fostering positivity, positive culture that we are consulting and creating systems and structures in school communities that are going to lead to retention of teachers. Um And that than our own space as we're working together, that we are striving for positivity that we're supporting each other, that we're collaborating. And that especially in my position where I have the ability to collaborate with other leaders in the organization to create systems and structures for our internal work that I'm really thinking about, how are we designing these systems and structures to promote positivity, to promote work life balance, to promote longevity and the roles that exist here within the video, a group. Another example would be working side by side. This is something that is important for us to do with our partners that we're really working with them, getting to know their school communities, um getting to know their perspectives, getting to know their context and really designing thoughtful intentional experiences that meet their specific context and needs. And then similarly that we're working side by side with each other within our teams and across our business units, thought partnering, collaborating and really benefiting from all the diversity of thought that exists across the organization.
What stands out to you about the culture at K12 Coalition?
Sheila Palmer: What stands out to me about the culture here at Ko Coalition is that it's one that really values ideation and collaboration, everyone's ideas are valued. Um There's a lot of opportunity to come up with an idea and bring it to life through collaboration with others as well as, as an individual. Um I think that this is a culture where voices, perspectives, experiences are all valued. And so I personally have really appreciated um showing up to work every day and knowing that if I have an idea, if I have a thought it's going to be heard and that there's a way that I can bring into life.
