As I begin my final sprint to the finish line, the time has come to look back on the experience of evolving from a leader of students to a leader of teachers: the process has changed me in more ways than I could have known.
Building a professional development framework has been one of the most authentic learning experiences of my coursework and field-based activities. I strived to create a sort of narrative thread throughout my different activities with the intent of building a robust documentation of my professional vision. As such, I used a particular professional development need on my campus as the thrust of my action research, so that my professional development efforts could serve as both qualitative and quantitative data for my research. From early in our coursework, I have seen the benefits of a professional development plan that supports ongoing learning in the style of professional learning communities (PLC’s) that provided shared learning and support from small groups working toward a similar goal. (Dana, 2009) While I recognized the need to maintain a level of cohesiveness with the prevailing methodology for professional development in my school district, my internship activities allowed me to use the new approach in conjunction with more traditional PD norms. As a result, I developed a PD process for the implementation of our new IWB technology that utilized a combination of large group instruction, open lab opportunities, and follow-up collaboration with grade-level or content-level teams as they prepared for realtime implementation. What evolved as the most significant surprise in this process was the level of autonomy faculty members were willing to take on as the PLC’s moved forward in the PD framework for the year. As often as I checked in with groups to monitor their progress toward yearly goals and offer my assistance, my group members came to me with fully formed lessons that were ready for implementation. The overall level of participation by faculty members in this initiative far outpaced my original expectations, a reality I found not only surprising, but absolutely thrilling.
One of the more challenging activities during the past year sprang up from a completely unexpected source: the transition of my internship to a more administrative perspective. As a result of this shift, I was asked to work closely with my principal to develop the comprehensive needs assessment and campus improvement plan for the upcoming school year. While I had a passing familiarity with these documents as a former member of the campus improvement team, they were, to me, documents one step removed from the day to day functions of my campus. This had evolved for two reasons. Under the leadership of my former principal, the development of these documents were not particularly collaborative: while teams were invited to offer feedback and suggestions, the actual drafting of the documents was done by the principal and presented to the campus improvement team for approval. Additionally, the message was clear that these were simply compliance documents that were not going to act as the overarching law of the campus. Few people on campus could even locate the documents upon request, and virtually none, myself included, could speak intelligently on the content of the documents. At the same time I moved into a more significant administrative role, my new campus principal looked to create processes where the campus needs assessment and campus improvement plan would function as they were intended: as legitimate governing documents for decision-making and campus improvement. (Elmore & City, 2007) The leadership training I completed to facilitate the development of these documents forced me to look at data in completely new ways, and gave me at times shocking new insights into how data is used both effectively and ineffectively for decision-making. Concurrently, I took the Leadership for Accountability course, which worked in perfect conjunction to cement this new skill set. I had the opportunity to lead the two-day professional development session on my campus that used the districts’ new formats to create cohesive documents with common vocabulary but unique campus goals. In my follow up meetings with campus and district leadership, I felt more confident than I dreamed possible as I analyzed data trends and strength/gap assessments to develop campus goals and action plans. It was in that moment I realized that I was ready to take on not only a teacher leader role, but a true campus leadership role.
References:
Dana, N. F. (2009). Leading with passion and knowledge: The principal as action researcher. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.
Elmore, R., & City, E. (2007, May/June). The road to school improvement. Harvard Education Letter , 23 (3), pp. 1-3.
No comments:
Post a Comment