Summary Paper - Providing Supervision to Teachers

Interview With Middle School Principal Essay

An effective school leader possesses skills to create, implement, evaluate, improve and share a staff development plan. I met with Ben Rhodes, Sandy Creek Middle School’s principal, to interview him on the specific elements of his yearly staff development plan. We began with the design process focusing on the district and school goals. District goals include improving literacy across the content areas in reading and writing, Guaranteed and Viable Curriculum (GVC). Guaranteed and Viable Technology (GVT), and Closing the Achievement Gap (Equity in Excellence). Using a variety of assessments to focus on specific needs, Ben Rhodes and Mary Sonya, our Pupil Achievement Specialist, examined CSAP, Explore, MAP, and RAD data. They use the Colorado Growth Model to help guide them to determine if students have made adequate yearly progress. Together, they created the plan that included the district goals mentioned above as well as continuing to include new technology skills, information on special education changes with Response to Intervention (RTI), maintaining current staff implementation of literacy goals and a new goal of raising achievement in math. In deciding how to meet the skill needs of the teaching staff, Ben begins with the hiring process. Knowing what our School Improvement Plan goals are, his interview questions include specific skills and knowledge that will help Falcon Creek students meet these achievement goals. Mr. Rhodes is very clear about his high expectations of the teaching staff. He is currently in Denver University’s P.H. D. program in Educational Leadership and he utilizes his knowledge of best practice research. His assessments of staff learning needs are gleaned from a variety of sources that include feedback from staff, team, department and grade level meetings, weekly achievement teams and building teacher mentors. Professional development principles Ben embraces are Rigor, Relationships, Relevance and Realness. Mr. Rhodes continually emphasizes that work needs to have relevance and rigor in assignments and that the relationships teachers build with students is essential for success. Specific content used for staff development goals are Glenn Singleton’s work (Equity), National Achievement Gap, High Performing Schools, 90/90/90 Studies, 21st Century Skills, Marzano’s Instructional Strategies, and Heidi Hayes Jacobs’ literacy work. A variety of activities for teaching new skills to teachers occurs throughout the year. These include study groups, guest speakers, ERO (staff development classes), open classroom visits, master teachers sharing best practices in literacy, differentiated instruction, , math, and culturally responsive teaching, conference opportunities, mentors, district content area inservices, building inservice days, monthly district content area meetings, partnerships with universities, Collaborative Action Research for Equity (C.A.R.E.) cadre, and monthly building equity meetings. Mr. Rhodes uses the district Teaching Learning Cycle (Plan-Teach-Monitor- Adjust) to evaluate and assess the learning goals and make improvements. Ben also meets with Ben and the leadership team about the goals and creates the timeline to provide training and analyze progress. Evaluation of the learning goals using the SIP (as a living document) and individual goals are important for improving staff development. Resources for the plan include fiscal, physical environment (rooms, food, equipment, and material), staffing, grants, compensation for teachers via monetary or time, and guest speakers. Creating a needs’ based master schedule that focuses on student academic needs, and one that allows time and opportunity for the staff to meet and develop the teaching skills necessary to increase student achievement is a challenging task that will drive staff development success. The biggest challenge is having enough time for teachers to teach, learn and implement these new skills in the classroom. The opportunities include separate instruction in department meetings, whole group in weekly achievement team, time for collaboration and time for feedback to adjust and revise the learning schedule. Using the data and staff needs, Mr. Rhodes and Mrs. Niles decide who needs to be involved as the experts on specific skills. The district provides experts for various content areas throughout the year. Often members of the teaching staff are asked to share skills and expertise on a specific topic that meets the professional development goal. Grants are used to provide additional resources for materials or training. Growth is measured through the same assessment tools used at the end of the school year as well as staff feedback throughout the year. Findings are reported out through the district and state. Mr. Rhodes maintains an “open door” policy with the parent community. Newsletters, community group meetings such as accountability and parent teacher organizations, school and district web pages, school feeder meetings, visitations, parent coffees and parent academies are other ways Falcon Creek reports findings and shares the plan with the stakeholders.  Implementing a successful professional development plan cannot take place without Mr. Rhodes staying current with and incorporating best teaching and learning practices. Ben attends conferences and diversity symposiums as well as his class work at the University of Denver to keep up with latest trends in education. Ms. Niles attends monthly PAS meetings and takes classes to ensure she stays current with best practices that she utilizes them in weekly achievement team topics. Using the Plan-Teach-Monitor- Adjust model keeps our professional development on track throughout the school year. Critical factors for successful implementation that Mr. Rhodes mentioned are accountability, frequent inspection, audit checks daily, weekly, bi-monthly and in leadership meetings. He is seen daily walking through the hall, popping into classrooms and talking with staff, students and parents. He is highly visible in the building. His motto is, “While I expect, I inspect.” Monitoring and evaluating ongoing progress ensures successful implementation and problem solving. Ben makes sure everything is a team effort and that systems are in place. When something is not working, he modifies and adjusts whatever is needed to make it successful. Mr. Rhodes ensures that resources remain available to organize and implement the plan by planning and seeking alternative resources through grants, PTO revenue, and human resources including senior citizen volunteers seeking the tax credit. Ben identifies opportunities to infuse the professional development plan into everyday activities through ongoing formal and informal assessments. These include walk throughs, his leadership meetings to hear from other administrators in the building and feedback from staff members as well as community surveys and meetings. This is an ongoing process throughout the school year.  Having staff “buy in” to this plan is another critical part to ensure student achievement. Providing opportunities to have teacher input on what skills they feel need to be included is one way to involve the staff. Providing choices in how teachers want to learn through workshops, classes, district area content meetings, university classes, or book studies is another way to ensure staff will be involved in learning the necessary skills to raise student achievement. Providing ways for teachers to give feedback on what is working, and other skill needs they have, will help to improve the effectiveness of the plan. Mr. Rhodes has used all of these to drive student achievement and raise the skill level of his teachers. Evaluation and improvement is continuous. Ensuring the implementation of the professional staff development plan is both formal and informal in evaluation. Ben and Ben consistently address school goals and clarify the purpose for each learning activity. Walk throughs are used to look for evidence that these skills are being demonstrated in each classroom. Department coordinators and administrators consistently reinforce and address the learning needs of the staff. Using SWIS data (discipline reports and statistics (weekly), feedback from the high school (monthly), checking who is on Honor Roll (quarterly) and who is on the “D” and “F” lists (weekly), time is scheduled to review and improve the evaluation process. Another emphasis is on affective indicators important for student gains using pre and post tests. An important tool used in evaluation and improvement is having staff complete S.M.A.R.T. goals each year. These are specific, attainable, results oriented, relevant, measurable and time bound goals. They are district mandated and used with the school improvement plan and the staff development plan. Equity and math are the goals for this year. Sharing yearly professional development plans is a great way to see what skills and programs have and have not worked in previous years. It also helps to know what skills to build on. Ben keeps a calendar of events and sees what strategies yield results and drops what is ineffective. He assesses the needs and prioritizes what he thinks will provide the best result. Mr. Rhodes keeps a “tickler” file of lists of speakers, plans, ideas, strategies he finds that he think might be useful in the future. Using the calendar, technology (Blackboard), a variety of resources, and the library, he keeps materials organized and available. I asked Ben what instructional strategies he has found to be most effective in working with staff. He said frequency, intensity and time. He has found the providing instructional strategies often and consistently, at the highest level, and providing time to implement them is what has worked for his leadership style. Mr. Rhodes shares his belief that we are committed to educate ALL students. I also asked Mr. Rhodes what his worst experience has been in the Professional Development process. He said his biggest challenge has been balancing core and elective teachers. As we have added more proficiency reading, writing and math classes, he has had to limit the number of elective classes. This had reduced the number of elective teachers and increased their teaching load. Core teachers teach five periods each day and elective teachers are required to teach six. Requiring attendance for weekly achievement team for teachers who are not teaching reading, writing and math has been a challenge. When RAD reports and specific CSAP data for “Bubble” students are being address, these teachers are not required to attend.  Providing staff professional development is a huge undertaking to ensure success for staff and high achievement for students. Mr. Rhodes relies on his ongoing current knowledge of best practices, clarity of vision for success, and specific systems for maintaining a high level of learning in creating his professional development plan. Ben has surrounded himself with highly qualified leaders to help design the instruction. He continues to reinforce data-driven instruction using RAD reports and culturally responsive teaching. His emphasis on Rigor, Relevance, Relationships will help teachers to infuse these in daily culture. Next year he will continue ongoing support for teachers as the district trains staff with new technology tools that will include net books, mounted projectors, peripheral technologies, new student achievement reporting system (aka RAD and DAS systems running on Brio software, new access points, that centralizes the management console, so students and staff will be able to connect to the CCSD wireless network at all school sites. Training will also be provided to refine the RTI process. Using district and school goals, assessing needs using the right data, planning specific content and processes to teach best instructional practices, providing resources to ensure success, measuring success and providing frequent feedback, adjusting practices as needed to ensure successful implementation, evaluating and improving strategies and then sharing the plan with the community has been key to ensuring the highest student achievement.