Standard One - Strategic Leadership
Principals will create conditions that result in strategically re-imaging the school’s vision, mission, and goals in the 21st century. Understanding that schools ideally prepare students for an unseen but not altogether unpredictable future, the leader creates a climate of inquiry that challenges the school community to continually re-purpose itself by building on its core values and beliefs about its preferred future and then developing a pathway to reach it.
Element 1a: 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 start of my principal residency, I had the opportunity to develop a letter to the staff of Brogden Middle School. In the letter I communicated my core beliefs and values.
The document to the right is Brogden Middle School's School Improvement Plan utilizing Indistar's NCStar program for school improvement. As I serve on the School Improvement Team and work in conjunction with the Process Manager, I worked to lead the school in establishing the mission, vision, and goals. This helped provide the school direction for the goals in which we were working towards as well as provided the necessary documentation of everyone's efforts.
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In conjunction with our restorative practices, working to establish positive relationships was a goal of the school this year. To facilitate this, I proposed completing a training on True Colors. I worked with a member of the Restorative Justice Team to bring this training to the staff. Many of the staff member took this training and implemented it in their classrooms.
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Bringing this to the school greatly improved everyone's understanding of each other and as such created a more positive school culture. When we did True Colors with the staff, it seemed to ease previous tensions due to the insight it provided to how people process situations. This helped with team relations, especially in 6th and 8th grade. When the staff brought True Colors to the students, the students seemed to accept each other more readily. They could be heard in class making statements like "oh, that's her orange shining through".
Element 1b: Leading Change
The school executive articulates a vision, and implementation strategies, for improvements and changes which result in improved achievement for all students.
At the beginning of the year, I co-facilitated a staff PD/workshop on SMART Goals. After presenting "How to Create an Effective SMART Goal", I worked with staff members to help them in writing their own PDP goals. Teachers needed to include a minimum of two goals: the department goal and a personal classroom goal. Through this training teachers gained a better understanding of what a SMART Goal was thus allowing them to create effective professional development goals.
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I worked closely with another assistant principal and our counselor to authentically create a Multi-Tiered Systems of Supports (MTSS) plan. This was the first year this process was being implemented at Brogden. As such, we had to formulate the best plan of action so to ensure the success of all students and staff members during this implementation process. I led PD on the MTSS process as well as provided staff with the plan for Brogden and subsequent expectations. This has allowed us to provide more effective interventions as well as document them in a manner that can be used to drive future instruction.
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Element 1c: School Improvement Plan
The school improvement plan provides the structure for the vision, values, goals and changes necessary for improved achievement for all students.
I have served as the Process Manager and School Improvement Team Member as both a teacher and administrator. My role is to update our tasks, work with the leadership team to assign team members to lead tasks, monitor our progress, and problem solve possible solutions with the team. Through developing this plan and serving on the School Improvement Team, I have improved my Strategic Leadership skills by solving problems and working as a team to drive the school's continuous improvement and set the direction for improved student outcomes.
I am a member of the Restorative Justice Team for our school. Brogden is one of five schools in Durham working in conjunction with the Coalition of Schools Educating Boys of Color (COSEBOC). It is a five year pilot program with this being year 2. The first year was spend working with the principal to grow their understanding of restorative practice. The second year was spent introducing and rolling it out with the staff. Below is the implementation plan I assisted the principal in creating. This plan has allowed for us to effectively introduce these practices to the staff and stay on track with the implementation.
Element 1d: Distributive Leadership
The school executive creates and utilizes processes to distribute leadership and decision-making throughout the school.
In my role as Principal Resident, I am over the ELA department. With that, I work closely with the Literacy Goal Team. I facilitate their meetings and ensure that the established action steps align with the mission, vision, and goals of the school. I then report back to the administrative team when we meet to discuss the outcomes of each Goal Team meeting. This role has been a transitional process with regards to my involvement. At the beginning of the year, we had many ELA teachers who were either new to the school or the profession (5/7 were either Beginning Teachers or new to Brogden). As the year progressed the teachers took on more leadership and leading up to their culminating Hispanic Literacy Night which they largely planned on their own.
To ensure an effective rotation of staff and administration for duty, administration created a live document. The documents outlined staff duties for the quarters. I personally created the athletic game duty calendars so to ensure coverage for all games were provided.
COURSEWORK
Letter of Introduction
Evaluation of Teacher Working Condition Survey
PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT AND TRAININGS
Crucial Conversations
Distinguished Leadership in Practice Assignment
Understanding by Design
READINGS
How to Win Friends and Influence People (Carnegie)
Leverage Leadership (Babrick-Santoyo)
Reframing Organizations (Bolman & Deal)
Seven Habits of Highly Effective People (Covey)
Speed of Trust (Covey)
Letter of Introduction
Evaluation of Teacher Working Condition Survey
PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT AND TRAININGS
Crucial Conversations
Distinguished Leadership in Practice Assignment
Understanding by Design
READINGS
How to Win Friends and Influence People (Carnegie)
Leverage Leadership (Babrick-Santoyo)
Reframing Organizations (Bolman & Deal)
Seven Habits of Highly Effective People (Covey)
Speed of Trust (Covey)