STANDARD ONE - Strategic Leadership
A. School vision, Mission and Strategic Goals: The school’s identity, in part, is derived from the vision, mission, values, beliefs and goals of the school, the processes used to establish these attributes, and the ways they are embodied in the life of the school community.
At the beginning of the year, I was given the responsibility to share the safety expectations and laws during our beginning of the year teacher workdays. I created a presentation and shared it with all staff during rotation sessions. Having this opportunity allowed me to identify and focus on key policies and laws that must be followed in the educational environment. As an administrator, periodically throughout the year I was given additional tasks to follow up with staff about the implementation of these policies. It was helpful that I was able to present this information to all staff so I could reference it if needed to address any concerns or violations of policy.
|
During my coursework, I created my personal vision statement to help me know my purpose and align with the school environment. Creating my vision statement helped me to commit not only to others but to myself the values that are important to me and help me keep my why at the forefront of everything I do.
|
B. Leading Change: The school executive articulates a vision and implementation strategies for improvements and changes which result in improved achievement for all students.
With the many changes including new administration with a desire to organize the school, I was asked to design a new school map with the names of teachers and room numbers to provide all staff with a clear understanding of our building for the year. The creation of map helped me to learn the school building and layout and to understand the purpose of relocating classrooms to accommodate the needs of both students and teachers within the building. Multiple perspectives were considered before making the final decisions about teacher placement. Sharing the map with staff was also a careful process as we aimed to wanted to ensure personal explanations were given when appropriate.
|
I worked with the administration to help create a master schedule that focused on block scheduling for the upper grades with a significant focus on the needs of our exceptional children's teachers schedule to maximize all of our available resources. I was able to realize the whole school needs as we worked to establish common plannings for all departments and still make sure the schedule primarily met the needs of students. Scheduling is a tedious process, however, once the schedule was created, I was able to identify the value of longer blocks for the older students and why we began with our fifth grade and worked backwards to create the schedule.
|
Effective communication is needed to implement change within our school to positively affect student achievement. This email was sent in response to concerns about transporting students who receive specialized instruction to maximize service times. Tough lessons were learned in regards to communication this year. I had to find the right balance of email, face to face and phone communications with each staff member. Most of the time, I have found that face to face is more effective, however, I have learned to follow up with emails to provide written documentation of our conversations.
|
C. School Improvement Plan: The school improvement plan provides the structure for the vision. Values, goals and changes necessary for improved achievement for all students.
In preparation for the school improvement team meetings and discussion of the school improvement plan, I worked with administration to develop an agenda that would focus on the needs of Cooper for the school year based on data. I spent several days at Leadership focusing on the needs of our school and together we utilized the TregoEd Situational Appraisal to determine our greatest needs at our school. This time was useful for me to learn more about the great things happening at Cooper and the challenges we would face this year. Throughout the year, I had a minimal role within the SIT team as notetaker, but was able to provide input and work collectively with the admin team and the SIT team to ensure we captured the needs of all stakeholders to continuously move forward throughout the year. It was my responsibility to ensure the information was shared with all stakeholders and to clarify as needed the information captured during meetings.
|
D. Distributive leadership: The school executive creates and utilizes processes to distribute leadership and decision making throughout the school.
As a veteran EC lead teacher, administration determined I would be a best fit as the administrator working with the EC department. During our initial PLC, we looked at the staff strengths and assigned roles to compliment their abilities. I learned a lot about leadership in leading a department I once was a part of. I had to find my place in the administrative role and ensure I was able to stay in my lane as I assisted where needed and allowed the team to discuss and solve challenges as they arose throughout the year.
|
In preparation for our committee start-ups for the year, I worked with the AP to establish a plan for staff to have an understanding of our committees and their purpose as well as voice in which committee they would participate in this year. This meeting allowed me to realize the things our staff valued most and to learn about their strengths according to their perspective. It was interesting to see teachers who teach only language arts choose a committee that does not focus on literacy.
|
I am the testing coordinator for Cooper Academy and developed the testing plan for each local and state test given at the school. With this plan, I shared this responsibility with an EC teacher who helped with training staff for testing throughout the year. With the uncertainties as the year continued with potential interview opportunities, I learned quickly this is a team effort and to always have at least two people who could step into my role as testing coordinator in the event of an emergency.
|