Standard 2: 2a-1 Instructional Leadership

While the individual teaching styles of the team were very different, it became apparent that commonality existed in terms of supporting the growth of our students. After team collaboration, we adopted the following vision statement: “We will provide a classroom climate that fosters thoughtful and respectful consideration of alternative viewpoints and ideas, personal ownership of learning, and individual construction of personally meaningful knowledge.”

Achieving a school district’s mission and vision requires the commitment of its stakeholders. In order to involve them in the process, it is necessary for educational leaders to “motivate staff, parents, students, board and community members” (Educational Leadership Constituencies Council, 2002, p. 4). The transformational leadership theory emphasizes the importance of educational leaders acting as role-models in order to motivate and inspire the school community. This approach has the potential to involve all stakeholders, leading to increased student success (Bush, 2007). The Assistant Director of Special Education in Northwest ISD directly supervised the school district’s assessment staff. Her education, experience, and passion set an example for her subordinates, stimulating them to achieve more, leading to her promotion to Executive Director of Student Services.

There is a great volume of literature on the need for effective leadership skills among tutors in order to promote student learning through quality instruction. As mentioned in the previous chapter, this realization is significant for many reasons. As such, this chapter reinforces the research question through a critical analysis of the existing literature with the aim of coming up with a different line of thought. As such, the study could offer a new dimension of leadership perception that is appropriate in fostering student learning in the modern and changing school setting. Although such characteristics are common across various sectors, the findings of this research put focus specifically on educators with the purpose of improving the quality of education and improved curriculum outcomes. The study could also employ various leadership theories to ensure the achievement of reliable findings.

Leaders don’t create followers, they create more leaders. This quote by Tom Peters best summarizes my philosophy of teacher leadership. As a teacher leader, it is up to me to inspire, direct, and encourage others so that stronger teacher, administrative, and student leaders may be born from the process. Teacher leadership involves collaboration between teachers, administrators, and teacher leaders with the goal of positively impacting the student learning environment. With student learning as the ultimate objective, teacher leadership “becomes an indispensable avenue for school improvement” (Coggins & McGovern, 2014, p. 21). So how do I as a teacher leader begin this process? I believe that teacher leadership can be achieved through three means: modeling, mentoring, and collaborating.

As an emerging instructional leader, Part 2: Policies and Programs provides a framework for improving schools. Danielson states how difficult it is to accomplish institutional change (Danielson, 32); however by giving careful consideration to school organization, policies and practices affecting students and faculty and school and community relations improvement is

I am not sure this is a good one?! Or I have to reconsider my decision.

Summative assessment data is rolling in! Now that we have data, it is important that we ensure that we have reputable and quality assured data. This is where you all come in! Over the next 48 hours, the following actions from you all are needed to ensure that we have accurate data:

“People need to know why what they are doing is worth the effort and how it connects to their personal and collective mission and values, or the endeavor will soon be stalled. We show that morality is often reflected in the work and used as a means to inspire others.” (Blankstein & Noguera, 2015). The teachers were organized, they ensured constancy and consistency through the teachers and students by having meeting and evaluating the work of the students in all classes. “Improving our school meant that we needed to improve instruction across the school. Quality instruction was the driver of our improvement. When we learned to teach differently, and focus on teaching our students the literacy skills they needed, the students learned the material better.” (Blankstein & Noguera, 2015). And this was the insight that inform my professional practice. In my school, we start working all the teacher as one team since last school year. This school year we are on the same path by improving our grading policy across the school and by helping each other to have a school of excellence. When something is new, fear is going to be there always, but it is our decision if we allowed fear to defeat use, or we can decide to fight our fears and conquer the

Successful administrators possess the necessary attributes that help them make decisions and solve various problems. All school leaders, regardless of their title or role in a building or district, will face obstacles involving individuals, community members, staff, and students. In order to address these challenges, leaders must understand the issue, formulate and apply a solution, and then reflect on their implementation of the solution to decide whether or not it is improving the situation. By no means is this an easy task, but effective leaders must strive to make sure their students, personnel, and constituents are being led down a path that will lead to overall academic and personal success. According to Young (2008), “as such,

One of my primary leadership responsibilities as the Principal of West Shore Middle School is to developed a shared leadership model whereby professional development and major building based decisions are created and vetted through different members of the leadership team before it is introduced to the staff as a whole. For example, administration, curriculum leaders, and the reading coach meet to create professional development experience to support our School Continuous Improvement Plan. We then meet with the team leaders to present what is created. Finally, the presentation is announced to the staff. Utilizing this process fosters a sense of collaboration to provide meaningful professional learning and building based instructional decisions.

In order to, “...maximize student academic and social success and to encourage lifelong learning and citizenship.” Van Buren Elementary School’s mission; the teacher leaders, administrator and myself must work in unison to implement the goals I have identified. Additionally, all those involved in educating children are part of distributed leadership team and they will need to analyze data and work together to derive personal goals in the area of literacy instruction pertinent to individual classroom needs. Finally, according to Taylor and Francis, “By design or default, teachers also are leaders of change, whether they promote it, support it, resist it, or ignore it.” (Taylor & Francis, 2014, 102-103) Henceforth, by utilizing distributed leadership we will achieve our literacy instruction goals. (Spillane & Diamond,

At Covington High School, we recently had a former teacher promoted to assistant principal. The leader was once an English teacher and is very knowledgeable in her content area. She served as an Instructional coach before she was promoted to a leadership position. She was responsible for conducting regular PLC meetings with teachers in the English department. She also has been recognized for the improvement she has made to the English department and the success students are having on the English and Reading ACT.

School improvement is identified in a series of stages, two of which are leadership by binding and leadership by bonding. When binding is present, staff feel morally committed to performing beyond the expectations of the leader. Leadership by bonding, however, emerges when there is a community of practice present within the school. Staff learns to trust one another, support each other, and develop collaborative relationships.

Throughout my teaching career, I often found myself in various leadership roles. The ones that most matched my leadership style included opportunities for me to practice the characteristics of a Transformational Leader. I believe instructional success for all students surfaces through a deep and sustained commitment by each and every staff member. This type of commitment and dedication occurs through empowerment. I've assisted with developing Professional Learning Communities in the past and this has assisted with fostering a culture of collaboration and accountability. My experience with PLC’s has led to the practice of Shared Leadership. Through Shared Leadership, staff was encouraged to assume greater responsibility and influence while

The final step of instructional rounds is referred to as “next steps.” This resembles the “multitrack alternatives” that allows several options to be proposed and considered simultaneously and to determine which one is best to address the problem of practice. Teachers may explore different angles or paths to determine what works over what is a barrier. Collecting evidence towards multiple options is