COMPETENCIES FOR SCHOOL EXECUTIVES
Click on each button to view my artifacts, after reading the description below.
*Certain artifacts have restricted access for confidentiality purposes.
COMPETENCY & ARTIFACT |
DESCRIPTION |
Throughout the two years of my graduate program, I wrote several letters and memo to various stakeholders including: community partners, district personnel, parents, and staff members. Some of the attached letters and memos are templates and some are actual copies of the communication that I sent out. Two- way communication is extremely important in schools because it makes people feel welcome, accepted, and comfortable within the school walls. |
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My Problem of Practice is based on increasing student achievement and growth in mathematics by increasing discourse around what students know and about mathematics and why they know what they know about mathematics. As I began learning walks with the math specialist, I realized that teachers were doing a lot more of the talking about math than students were. Therefore, through the implementation of techniques learned at the Open-Up-Resources Supporting Productive Struggle Training and from the book Total Participation Techniques by Persida and William Himmele, it became more noticeable during learning walks that student were more engaged in their learning around mathematics. |
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During my residency, one of the 6th grade teams was having conflict among the team members, which was effecting their ability to collaborate around student expectations/discipline, intervention, and parent communication. Therefore, having very little experience with restorative circles, I worked with the 6th grade assistant principal and my principal mentor to facilitate a restorative circle with the entire team in February to create a safe place for dialogue and to repair the damage done to their relationships. At the beginning of March, we had a brief follow-up meeting to check-in on the groups progress. Prior to being coached on leading this restorative circle, I had to read the Circle Keepers Handbook to better understand the essential components of the restorative circle. Therefore, I attached this as my artifact. |
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At the beginning of the school year, many teachers suggested that they do not have a space to go during the day away from their classroom to work, relax, and interact with other staff members. Since the school did not have a teachers lounge, my mentor principal, magnet coordinator, and I worked together to take one of our supplies room and turn it in to what we call the Carroll Cafe. We cleaned out supplies, painted the walls, purchased snacks and beverages, and organized shelves of professional learning texts on one of the walls. The purpose of creating this space is to boost staff morale, which coincides with one of our school improvement goals of retaining quality staff and 90% of staff or more will indicate that Carroll is a good place to work. |
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In an effort to provide students with opportunities beyond the classroom, I reached out to staff members at the beginning of the school year to ask if they would be willing to lead a club of their choice after school one day each week or one day every other week. As a result, we were able to offer 11 different clubs, free of charge to students thanks to the dedication of our staff members. Clubs offered were Beta club, STEM club, Orchestra club, Jr. Librarian & Tech Team, Book Club, American Sign Language Club, Choir, Cross Country, Textiles and Fashion club, and Step Team. The attached artifact is a flyer that I created for students and parents promoting the clubs that are school offered this year. |
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When our school began to switch over to remote learning, our school staff was charged with making sure that every child in the school had access to a device. Fortunately, our school is a one-to-one device school with all students having the opportunity to check-out an IPad provided by the school. However, earlier in the year I realized that not everyone had checked one out, so I began to make a list of students who did not have IPads. I turned the list into a table and assigned different teachers and counselors students to contact families to ask if they needed us to provide them with an IPad to participate in remote learning. As a result, we were able to reach families faster and get them access to a device quicker. It also provided teachers and counselors with the opportunity to touch base with families directly to check and see how they were doing during the Covid19 Pandemic. |
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At Carroll Middle School, there are several different committees made up of staff members. The committees include: School Improvement Team/Instructional Leadership Team, Mindfulness Committee, Equity Committee, PBIS Committee, Culture Committee, and Principal Advisory Council. At the beginning of school year, I created a form for parents to fill-out indicating whether or not they would like to be part of each of these committee. Then, I sent the names interested along with contact information to the committee chairs. On the committee that I led, two parents attended regularly to dialogue and ask questions about what equity looked like at Carroll. Having certified staff and parents together at committee meetings promotes collaboration between teachers and parents to increase parent efficacy. The attached artifact are the results from the interest survey that Carroll families filled out in August. |
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With the school improvement team at Underwood Elementary and with the 6th grade team at Carroll Middle School, I provided each member of the team with the opportunity to dive into their individual personality make-up by discovering their dominant color in the True Colors inventory. The results from the survey helped to promote the self-awareness of staff members when interacting with people in their professional and personal lives. |
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I had the opportunity to attend the Color of Education Summit in downtown Raleigh in the Fall of 2019. At this conference, I learned about ways to improve the quality of education for students of color from historically marginalized and underrepresented racial and ethnic groups. The keynote speaker was Ta-Nahesi Coates. After the conference, I read his book "The Water Dancer," which increased my awareness around bondage and slavery. The attached artifact is a Tweet from the Color of Education Summit. |
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Throughout my time in the Principal Fellow Program, I have had the opportunity to lead two lead staff/parent equity committees at two different schools. I also assembled a student equity team during my residency. One of the activities that we engaged in during our student equity team meetings was looking at scenarios in schools that I created based on situations I read about in the news or in educational articles. We discussed as a team whether or not each of these scenarios modeled equity in schools or inequities in schools. Then we discussed how we would respond to these situations, if they happened in our school. Engaging in these conversations prepared students to lead in discussion at the student equity summit. |
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During my principal residency, I attended several different Core Professional Learning Team meetings, Content Professional Learning Team meetings, and Intervention Team Meetings. At these meetings, we would engage in kid talk around individual student data to determine the best academic, attendance, or behavior intervention for that student using our judgement as a team. The attached artifact is the document that was created by the Intervention Team with the help of our MTSS that PLTs would use to select the appropriate intervention within the tier level that the student demonstrates a need for. |
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During my principal residency, I used a planner to organize my schedule of events and to-do lists. I broke my planner into three sections: Carroll events/tasks, NC State events/tasks, and personal events/tasks. If I completed the task, then I placed a check next to the activity or task. If I did not complete the task, then I crossed it out and inserted that task into a future date. If I was not able to make an event, I crossed it out and wrote the reason why I missed that event, generally. I also used Google Calendar for scheduling events for school, NC State, and personal. The Google Calendar was mostly utilize so that I could invite the appropriate stakeholders to meetings or events. Any event that I scheduled in Google Calendar would also be recorded in my planner. I find that when I write things down, it is easier for me to remember. |
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Early on in the program, I took the Myers-Briggs emotional intelligence inventory. The results affirmed what I do on a daily basis in my residency, which is I strive to create an orderly and harmonious work environment. I always provide honest answers to questions and feedback, but in a friendly way. I am loyal, which means if I say I am going to do something, then I do it. I also hold the people I work with accountable for being friendly and loyal. I build trusting and respectful relationships by noticing and remembering specifics about people. Additionally, I am very concerned with how others feel about me, so if you tell me confidential information, it stays with me, as I don't want others to feel that they can't trust me. The attached artifact of my Myers-Briggs results affirms all of these characteristics about me. |
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Throughout my residency, I have met with my cohort director, executive coach, and principal mentor regularly to receive feedback, then I implement that feedback into later experiences in my residency. I also complete a daily log at the end of each day of my residency, and I write a reflection that I submit to my cohort director and executive coach each week. I am attaching my Personal Leadership Development Plan, which I review quarterly and update as needed. I know that by completing the experiences listed that I will be a better leader for our public schools. |
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When I doing learning walks in classrooms, I noticed that not every student had IPads, and Carroll MS is supposed to be a one-to-one device school. I immediately discussed with my mentor principal what I noticed, and she told me that some students do not have IPads because they do not bring back the signed insurance agreement and/or they do not pay the $20 fee to cover the insurance of the device, which allows students to be able to take their IPads home. I did not think it was fair that all students didn't have access to an IPad. Therefore, my artifact serves as the email that I sent to the digital learning teacher and technology instructional assistant regarding the amount of unused IPads we had in the media center. In the end, we had 97 unused devices. I was able to distribute IPads to grade levels based on the numbers in the email that I collected of students who didn't have IPads assigned to them. The IPads were issued to each team's science teacher, but students on that team could use the devices in any core class and elective, but the device had to remain in the building. By responding to this issue as soon as I noticed this, about 100 more students were able to have access to an IPad to enhance their learning about one week later. |
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During my residency, when completing learning walks and pulse checks with my principal mentor, we noticed that Team Time, which is supposed to be an intervention and enrichment time was being used as a study hall. Therefore, my mentor principal and I worked together to create a document informing teachers of the expectations around Team Time, which is my attached artifact for this competency. I also worked with all three grade levels during PLT meetings to lend support when restructuring this block of time. Finally, I led small intervention groups during Team Time for 6th grade and 8th grade. |
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During my residency, I created a student equity team. Since many of the topics discussed are of sensitive nature, I knew I had to carefully progress to these topics by making students on the team feel comfortable. Therefore, I decided to start the meeting with a three tiered introduction activity. In the first tier, students just stated their name and their favorite app or movie. In the second tier, they talked about where they went to elementary school and what they favorite breakfast food was. Then, in the final tier they talked about interactions with staff that supported their success and interactions with staff that interfered with their success. Finally, dwelling on those interactions that interfered with their success, we talked about what they four quadrants of teaching tolerance are: interrupt, question, educate, and echo. The progression of discussion worked because when we arrived at the more sensitive topics, the students felt comfortable and safe when speaking on topics regarding equity and fairness. The artifact attached is the slide deck from that first meeting. |
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Since Carroll Middle School is a Leader in Me school, we worked as a team to embed Covey's 4 Disciplines of Execution into the daily culture. I worked with my mentor principal, the instructional facilitator, and the magnet coordinator to design this process. At the beginning of the school year, each homeroom class, and each student create a Wildly Important goal for the quarter or beyond, depending on their progress. They also create action steps, which would serve as the lead measures in order to achieve their Wildly Important Goal. They keep a scoreboard on what we call a WIG Tracker, in which they track their weekly progress on their Wildly Important Goal. Finally, they meet with an accountability partner to check in on all of the previous steps. Goal setting is crucial in order to succeed, but while it is important, it definitely is a process. Meaning, you need to know the appropriate steps to take in order to reach your goals, along with having a way to measure whether or not those action steps are actually helping you reach that goal or not, which is where the scoreboard and accountability partner come in. The attached artifact is a folder with the copies of the documents we created to document each discipline. |
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At Carroll Middle School to weave together the Leadership and Technology magnet theme, students create and collect artifacts throughout the year into a digital portfolio. In order to ensure and monitor the use of these, I learned from the school's magnet coordinator how to create a digital portfolio. Once I learned how to create a digital portfolio, I went into My Learning classes (homeroom) on Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays to assist 6th graders with creating and managing them. |
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In addition to using my planner to organize daily, weekly, and monthly tasks; and creating agendas for equity committee meetings; I created the fall picture schedule this year. I was surprised at how many factors had to be considered when making the schedule for this event, such as determining long enough slots for students to get their pictures taken, but still creating as little disruption as possible to student learning; considering transition times was also a factor because I had to make sure that picture times did not occur during class period transitions; and considering the fact that photographers would need breaks periodically during the day. The attached artifact is a copy of the schedule that I created. |
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Throughout my entire journey in the NC State Principal Leadership Program, I have been working on crafting and revising my vision statement, as I learn in my classes, specialized training, and field work. My vision statement ties in my core values and beliefs regarding education and leadership. When engaging in daily activities, I always make time to reflect on how these activities connect to my personal vision, my school's vision, and the district's mission/vision. |