STANDARD THREE
Cultural Leadership- Creates a collaborative work environment; site based management; shared vision values and goals to improve school culture; distributed leadership; acknowledges failures and celebrates successes; develops efficacy and empowers staff members.
Click on each button to view my artifacts, after reading the description below.
*Certain artifacts have restricted access for confidentiality purposes.
Click on each button to view my artifacts, after reading the description below.
*Certain artifacts have restricted access for confidentiality purposes.
3A-Focus on Collaborative Work Environment
The school executive understand and acts on the understanding of the positive role that a collaborative work environment can play in the school's culture.
I worked with my cohort mates to teach others about the EdCamp model by simulating this type of learning around topics that would allow new teachers to feel successful and supported in their classrooms. The EdCamp model is a great way to structure professional development for your staff because it is very participant led and driven, which empowers educators. This model also addresses many of the adult learner needs that I learned about in my School Improvement class, including: choice, opportunity to share, and self-direction.
I worked with a group of my cohort mates to design a professional development session that focused on the 6 PLT characteristics and how to get PLTs to hold each other accountable at the elementary school level. This professional development session could be easily adapted to the middle/ high school levels, as well. Professional Learning around PLTs is important because strong Professional Learning Teams translate into a more collaborative approach and increasing student achievement and growth.
I am working with four other middle school principal residents, Office of Equity Affairs, and my school community to establish a student equity team that can participate in a student equity summit with these four other middle schools.
I led the staff, student, and parent equity teams at my residency school with one of the counselors. Here are the agendas for the school year that we have worked together to create and facilitate actions and discussions to make Carroll Middle School more equitable in serving their community.
3B-School Culture and Identity
The school executive develops and uses a shared vision, values, and goals to define the identity and culture of the school.
Carroll Middle School blends the content from the Positivity Project Project and Leader in Me Programs into its daily schedule, which is part of the school's magnet theme. The two programs have been blended together into daily 20 minute lessons at the beginning of the school day by Carroll's magnet coordinator. Teachers deliver these lessons daily in a block called My Learning. My role in this has been to conduct learning walks to make sure that teachers are delivering the content from these lessons, but also to make sure that students are relevantly engaged in the learning taking place during these lessons. I have also assisted in the creation of these lessons. Attached is one of the weekly lessons that I created around the topic of Equity, which ties with the Positivity Project trait of fairness. The lessons also incorporate the ongoing Leader in Me program WIG (Wildly Important Goal) Wednesday, in which students check in with their accountability partner on the progress they've made with their personal WIG's that they set at the beginning of the quarter.
At the beginning of the school year, I worked with Carroll's magnet coordinator and STEM teacher to create digital scavenger hunt called GooseChase to teach or re-teach teachers and other staff members about the district and school's expectations, the magnet theme, and information about each other in a collaborative and creative way. The planning document displays the logistics and ideas for missions within the activity. This is a great way to deliver the handbook expectations through movement and implementation of the 4 C's through a technology tool that teachers can use in their own classrooms.
One of the first tasks that I was assigned at Carroll Middle School was to fill-out the application for the Family Engagement Award. The document highlights ways in which Carroll partners with families through activities, such as Curriculum Nights to help families understand the competency based grading system, home visits, quarterly Leadership Exhibitions to display student work, and quarterly student-led conferences. It also includes a plan for the award money would be used in the future by forming a family engagement committee, engaging in book studies, increasing home visits by providing teachers with small stipends, and creating academic parent/teacher teams.
I created a thorough school culture plan for a school that I could be leading in the future. My school culture plan begins with establishing a shared vision, but it also puts a strong emphasis on collaboration. A much needed trend in education right know is making sure that students are supported not only when it comes to academics, but also when it comes to social and emotional learning. Therefore, my culture plan puts a strong emphasis on the Conscious Discipline program, which empowers adults to respond to daily conflict, transforming it into an opportunity to teach important life skills to children. I truly believe that this program would support all students in becoming productive, respected citizens; and I believe that this program would empower teachers. In order to boost student achievement and teacher retention, a positive school climate and culture are needed. Therefore, it is necessary for a school principal to have a thorough and systematic culture plan created with input from key stakeholders.
3C- Acknowledged Failures, Celebrates Accomplishments and Rewards
The school executive acknowledges failures and celebrates accomplishments of the school in order to define the identity, culture, and performance of the school.
I visited an elementary school in Wake County to evaluate the culture. In this artifact, I celebrated the aspect that contributed to a positive school climate/culture. I also acknowledged the failures that were observed in regards to the climate/culture in the school, along with providing recommendations for turning these failures into strengths. Before establishing a school's culture, it is critical to scan and assess the current culture of the school building. This allows me as the leader to include in the new culture plan the things that are already working, while changing and making new recommendations around the components that are not working.
I have contributed to the Cougar Crossing weekly newsletter for Carroll staff that the school's magnet coordinator has created by adding shout-outs to groups of staff members and individual staff members. By celebrating groups of staff members and individual staff members, it lets them know that they are appreciated and indispensable, but also encourages them to celebrate the accomplishments of the students that they serve.
Other ways that I acknowledge staff members for their continuous hard work and dedication to the students is by writing them thank you notes and putting them in their mailboxes and by Tweeting out the wonderful things that I observe in their classrooms that align with the school's mission, vision, and core values. By acknowledging the staff's work, it encourages to keep utilizing the practices that I am acknowledging in their daily work.
As indicated by multiple data sources such as, quarterly teacher working conditions surveys, individual conversations, and discussions in PLT meetings; many teachers voiced that they were struggling with delivering content to their students effectively because of disruptive student behaviors. Therefore, I worked with the PBIS/Intervention team chairs to arrange professional development with our MTSS coach to provide teachers with strategies to improve student behavior and classroom management. The professional development was delivered one time each quarter during grade level PLT time.
Throughout my residency at Carroll, I conducted learning walks to measure the level of student engagement in classrooms, which I mentioned previously. However, this tool also served as a purpose to celebrate the things that teachers were doing in their classrooms, as well as providing them with ideas to address possible failures or areas of growth in their classrooms.
3D- Efficacy and Empowerment
The school executive develops a sense of efficacy and empowerment among staff which influences the school's identity, culture, and performance.
My teacher empowerment artifact highlights my core beliefs and values around teacher empowerment and leadership. I have also created a strategic plan for empowering teachers, which is crucial in retaining quality teachers that increase student achievement and growth.
I worked with the administration team at Carroll to create this roles and responsibilities document at the beginning of the school year, which highlights responsibilities of each administrator; who department heads, grade level chairs, and team leaders are; and what committee each certified staff member wants to serve on. All teachers are required to serve on at least one committee, so that everyone is directly connected in some way to the school improvement plan. Each committee is directly linked with a key process on the school improvement team.
In my last year serving as a 3rd grade teacher at Underwood Elementary School, I started a staff Equity Team. The team was voluntary and only met once per month. However, using the open-narrow-close protocol from my culture plan, I lead the creation of the team's vision, as well as leading them through discussion as to how we wanted to spend the majority of our time at the meetings. The team voted on doing on the book Other People's Children by Lisa Delpit. The book is broken into three sections, and we agreed as a team to read one section each month, and then discussing each section at that month's meeting using protocols provided by the Office of Equity Affairs. At the end of the year, I led the creation of a staff survey by the Equity Team to determine the area of focus within the team for the next school year. I continue to serve on this team as a parent representative.