Jane Blomstrand is an educator with over 30 years of experience in schools. She has held many different positions in education including classroom teacher, literacy specialist, elementary school principal, and director of a teacher-credentialing program.
Her first book “Meet the Principal: My Journey Beyond the Curriculum” started out as a response to her grandkids question “What DOES a Principal Do All Day?” It quickly developed into a book of vignettes about the intriguing challenges a school leader faces and the many relationships a principal forms with students, staff and parents.
Jane understands that the magic happens in the classroom and her second book “Teaching with Heart: Making Students Connections That Count” evolved from what we have learned from scientific research and many conversations with teachers and school administrators about supporting students to be successful.
Principals, teachers, and parents would enjoy and relate to the variety of stories included about the crucial importance of getting to know our students
Jane currently coaches new school administrators and lives with her husband in Northern California.
My vision of education
A quilt hung in my office when I was a principal. It has a special meaning for me. I looked to it more frequently than I ever imagined as a reminder of where my focus needed to be for whatever decision I was about to make. How that quilt came to be, is part of my journey.
I was at university getting my Administrative Credential and was required to complete a project representing my vision of education. It could be narrative in the form of a thesis paper, or an artistic portrayal. I gave it a lot of thought and finally came to the conclusion that as a thesis paper it would most likely sit on a shelf and never get looked at again. However, a visual representation could be displayed wherever I worked, and would serve as a constant reminder of what was most important to me about educating students.
So I chose to create a visual project. What medium would I choose? What would it look like? After much thought, I decided to use fabric since my grandmother had taught me how to sew, and it would be a tribute to her to have my vision of education created out of a medium we both loved and shared together.
Off I went to the local fabric store for inspiration. While searching through the many bolts of fabric, I found the perfect one to use as the base for the project; a colorful, multi-cultural collage of children. Of course, that was ideal. Students are the center of education. I decided to create an appliqué wall hanging using that fabric as the trunk of a tree, symbolizing the students we are entrusted with teaching. Then, I would create roots in the ground to represent everything essential to educate them, and add leaves on the trunk branches representing all the learning we hoped they would achieve. I purchased the necessary fabric and began work on the project that afternoon.
The quilt hung on the office wall of every job I held in education, and currently hangs in my home. It is still a reminder to me of what Franklin Roosevelt said, “We cannot always build the future for our youth, but we can build our youth for the future.”
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