SEIS Reflection

During my meeting with Mr. Hull, I was able to get a good idea of where I need to improve to be a successful district leader.  I am an Assistant Principal, so I still have quite a ways to go. Mr. Hull explained that I will need extensive experience to understand the full educational arena.  He explained that you must become an expert in campus based education in order to be successful in district based education.  He said, "a good district leader has experience as a school leader. This experience helps the leader make sound decisions that are able to impact students directly".  He encouraged me to pursue my doctorate degree, and I believe that is my next step.

Reflection on Professional Development Plan

This was a great way to get a realistic view of my career.  I was able to choose a creed path, and determine what steps would help me be successful in that process.  I am only an assistant principal, so I have a lot to do to reach my ultimate goal of being a superintendent of a small school district.  In order to achieve this, I must grow as a leader.  Professional development is a great way to foster my knowledge and make strides in my career.  This activity was very thought provoking and definitely beneficial to my overall career goals.

Three year Professional Development Plan

Part E Three Year Professional Development Plan

 

Goal	TExES Competency and Domain	Objective (What do you want to improve?)	Course Work/Book/ Workshops (How do you want to improve?)	Mentor Professional Support (Who will help you improve?)	Date of Completion	Evaluations (How will you know you have improved?)
Year 1 Goal 1	Domain II Competency 005	Facilitate the use and integration of technology, telecommunications and information systems into classrooms to enhance learning.	Attend technology training sessions specifically related to integration into the classroom. Also to learn new technology as it is brought into our district.	Technology helping teacher- Cheryl Ruppelt,	May, 2013	I will evaluate through share sessions with teams throughout the school. In share sessions I will be able to extended new knowledge to other and make sure my own skills are being developed.
Year 1 Goal 2	Domain 3 Comp. 9	Analyze and evaluate campus needs for maintenance and upgrades. Prepare work orders and communicate directly with Director of Facilities. Take on extra projects to assist with planning next Bond Election for new high    school.	Learning From the Best by Sandra Harris	Robert Hull	May 2013	Work orders entered and completed. Facilities at WNGA maintained and improved. Participation in Board Meetings for preparation for Bond Election
Year 2 Goal 1	Domain II Competency 006	Encourage and facilitate positive change, enlist support for change, and overcome obstacles to change within my campus.	Participation in the Administrative Leadership Summer Academy. This extended staff development is offered to up and coming leaders within the district. It will develop my leadership skills when it comes to facilitating positive change.	Coordinator for Staff Development- Robin McGlohn,	June, 2014	With the completion of the Leadership Academy. I will apply strategies developed from the summer institute to my leadership style.
Year 2 Goal 2	Domain I Comp 4	To increase communication with the Board	Become familiar with Board members and their districts and the needs of their respective districts.	Dr. Mark Henry Superintendent	June 2014	Summarize the needs of each district and the Board member that represents each. Identify the initiative needed for the individual districts and campuse
Year 3 Goal 1	Domain III: Comp 08	Apply effective leadership and management skills in relation to campus budgeting, personnel, resource utilization, financial management, and technology use.	I will listen and work collaboratively with stakeholders to develop campus budgets.  I will also listen and follow my principal and read books on laws and policies to ensure sound financial management in relation to accounts, bidding, purchasing, and grants. Read sites that help out with budgeting for example, www.nais.org	Head Principal Robert hull Associate Principal Rob Brotemarkle	April, 2015	When evaluating working with budgeting for the campus I will evaluate my prior knowledge to my current. With experience I should be able to more confidently allocate funds for the campus.
Year 3 Goal 2	Domain 3 Comp 8	Prepare a strategic plan to improve technology usage and update current technology.	Web 2.0: New Tools, New Schools by Gwen Solomon, Lynne Schrum. Using Technology with Classroom Instruction that Works by Howard Pitler, Elizabeth Hubbell, Matt Kuhn, and Kim Malenoski.	Becky cook Director of Technology	June 2015	Submit plan to district leaders for consideration and possible implementation.

EDLD 5399: Week 4 Part !

Part D : Reflection On Reflective Leadership

Reflection is a vital for improvement.  As I look back at my internship, there are some areas I feel that I need additional support.  I am still very overwhelmed by the budgetary aspects of a district.  I am only a second year assistant principal, so I am just becoming familiar with how the budget works on a campus.  The district level is still somewhat foreign to me.  Even though I worked closely with my site supervisor and district supervisor, it will still take some time to grasp the financial workings of a district.  While going through my evaluation with my site supervisor, he encouraged me to work with others in central office to get a better grasp of what needs to be done in this district.  My duties next year will have some campuses budgetary assignments.  This will greatly benefit me over the course of my career.   He also explained how I need to work with other administrators in the district to develop policies that affect schools.  Mr. Hull explained that this would allow me to collaborate with others to address issues that all campuses face. Just discussing my internship with my site supervisor was very beneficial to me.

Reflection should be an ongoing process, in order to evaluate and self-correct.  I find that reflecting on past activities allow me to be much more proactive.  One policy our principal has implemented is immediate reflection.  At the end of every planned event or crisis, we immediately reflect as an administrative team.  The suggestions are made and placed in a binder.  The person responsible for that activity is responsible for making changes within a week to that particular protocol.  This has be really helpful when it comes to Prom, Homecoming, traffic accidents, and etc..  Our team rarely makes the same mistakes over and over.  It is also helpful for the next person who takes on that task.  Initially, I found this process intimidating, but now I believe it is essential to good leadership practices.

The courses during the program have been highly thought provoking.  Each course provided an opportunity to self-assess learning after each course.  I really enjoyed the blogging aspect of the courses.  It allows you to share your thoughts with the world, and it opens up a channel to engage in professional dialogue with other educational leaders.  The wiki page that I created allowed me to get a good grasp on some technology aspects that I was previously lacking in.  The readings and activities were extremely rigorous at times.  EDLD 5342 was the most rigorous online course I have ever taken.  It forced me to work collaboratively with other people in a distance situation.  I definitely learned a lot from this experience, especially patience.  The assessments really paid off at the end, because they really helped during the LCE.

Reflective practice has become a part of my life already.  I currently serve as the lead person for crisis events on our campus.  I am responsible for creating plans to manage crisis issues in an efficient safe way.  I am constantly required to update plans, in order for to effectively do my job.  I have to adjust to issues in the news.  For example, the school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, has forced me to revise how I currently lock down our building.  This type of reflection will allow me to be completely prepared in case an emergency situation does arise.  

EDLD 5399: Week 3 Part 2

Part C

Describing Recommendations and District/Campus improvement initiative/Action Research

The purpose of my action research was to improve scores for African American and Hispanic students at the campus level.  The first step was to develop a discussion on how to affect at-risk students.  I took our district administrative training and created a campus wide book study.  I established an Edmodo account and had teachers post questions and discussion topics to the board. The title of the book was “Teaching with Poverty in mind”.  This is an excellent book, to inform teachers about what many of our low socio-economic students are facing.  This book places emphasis on changing the mind set of teachers.  The book study lasted about one month. Next, I had teachers visit high achieving schools with similar demographics. I used this as an opportunity for teachers to learn what others are doing differently and how to apply it to our campus.  Afterwards we took the ideas back to our campus, and had a discussion to determine what is plausible for our campus.  Next, we requested that the district have successful mathematics coaches from our district/state, come in and train your staff. As a department,  we came to a consensus on a model that we wanted to implement on our campus.  We built in evaluation to constantly assess the effectiveness of our program. 

This plan was designed for all students, but it places an emphasis on African American and Hispanic students.  The results of the action plan helped improve our schools overall dropout rate, which will improve the community as a whole.  We made a concerted effort to include members of the community in the program.  We made calls, held conferences and sent letters out to parents and local business to provide time, materials, or money to help with the tutoring program.  This proved to be very beneficial.  We were able to provide the students with small snacks, during tutoring sessions. This process including the proper planning led to the success of our program

The management aspect was very difficult.  The budget crisis eliminated the majority of the money we were expecting to have at our disposal. This required us to go to the community and ask for money.  Local Businesses provided about $4800.00 in monetary donations.  Kroger’s provided the school with about $800 dollars in snacks, finally office max provided about $200 in office supplies. We were able to use $1500 dollars for professional development for our entire math department.  We went to different high achieving schools, that had a similar demographic to ours, and were trained by their math department on using “best practices” in reaching those students. In an effort to save money, each teacher was given one “best practice” to specialize in.  The teacher was responsible for incorporating their practice into each unit.  This cut down, on having to provide professional development for all teachers, which would have cost a significant amount of money.   We also implemented more formal assessments, to involve monitor our progress towards meeting our goal.   The remainder of the money was used to compensate teacher for Saturday morning tutorials.  Teachers were paid $15 dollars an hour for a three hour session.  We would have eight Teachers (two from each subject) for two hours. It cost us about $240 per Saturday.  We were able to get members of the community to volunteer. We also used the donations to provide snacks to our students. We also incorporated a rewards component for students that constantly improved.  They were given small snacks or gift cards to local restaurants. This helped encourage students to work harder, which improved the overall culture of the program.

As a result of our hard work, student’s cores improved from a 47 to a 72.  While Hispanics improved from a 49 to a 78.  This was a vast improvement of from last year.  We met our goal with Hispanics but missed it with African Americans.  The “best practices” that were the most effective with each group was:

 Recommendations:

1.      District needs to create a district wide plan of action to address our at-risk population.

2.      District needs to talk with campus level administration about developing campus-specific professional development to meet the campus needs.

3.      Provide professional development to Administration to ensure that the schools have the tools to affect change.

4.      Have schools create a plan of action, with measurable objectives and timelines.

5.      Assign curriculum coaches to each school to assist in the implementation of the plan.

6.      Provide teachers professional development and training

7.      Provide funding to purchase the necessary resources

8.      Evaluate the plan and make adjustments as needed.

EDLD 5399: Week 3 Part 1

CARE MODEL

Concerns

1.      Our district has had an increase in at-risk students.

2.      Budget cuts have forced the elimination of key programs and positions

3.      Over-representation of minorities in the districts DAEP.

Affirmations

1.      The district has placed and emphasis in distance learning

2.      The level of collaboration between the district and community.

3.      Leadership development program

Recommendations-

1.      The district needs to reserve funding to provide late busses for students.  This will allow more students to stay for after tutorials.  This would also eliminate the disruption to the instructional day.  The number of students who stay after school for tutorials have dropped dramatically when the late bus program was deleted three years ago.  This directly affects many of our At-risk students that are struggling.

2.      To protect the instructional day, the district needs to place a bigger emphasis on distance learning.  Many times teachers are pulled from classes or asked to travel to ISC after school for professional development.  The district has placed an emphasis in distance learning, but I honestly believe this can be expanded.  By using the Adobe suite, Moodle, and other free software, the district will be able to protect the instructional time of teachers and students. 

3.      The district should have schools develop improvement initiatives for  at-risk students in Geometry, Chemistry, and biology.  These three areas have been a weak spot for the district over the past three years. 

`     Evaluate

1.      The district should use Summative Formative Assessments (SFA) scores throughout the year to evaluate the success of any new initiative that is put into place.

2.      The district should establish employee satisfaction surveys that are taken four times a year.  The information for this survey will be used to evaluate programs, communication, and any other pertinent issues the district may have. 

3.      The district needs to develop a process for removing students from the original school setting to a DAEP for persistent misbehavior.   This can be evaluated at the end of each semester.  This is a good way to decrease the number of minority students that are going to a DAEP.  

EDLD 5399: WEEK 2 PART 2

Superintendent Entry Plan

First Day

Goal: Meet with individual board members to try and establish a relationship with them.

Objective: Get a clear understanding of district priorities and get a feel for the “temperature of the board.

Activities addressing goals and objectives:

Brief 15 to 20 minute meeting with each board member to ensure that I am aware of their expectation.

Resources:  My office and a few snacks.

First Week

Goal:

·         To become familiar with district personnel

Objectives: 

·         Meet with all current Assistant and Associate superintendents, Directors, and other high ranking district officials.

·         Review District needs Assessment

·         Discuss with the Board upcoming agendas.

Activities:

·         Introduce my self to the district administration team. I would meet with them as a group and individually to discuss my expectations and allow them to share any information with me at that time about pertinent issues in their department.

·         Speak with Board members about the current needs of the district and discuss needs/assessments.

·         I would also set up a meeting to discuss the districts budget.

Resources: 

·         Time

·         Meeting room

·          Action plan template

·         Also my secretary would sit in on this meeting as well.

First Month

Goal: To become more visible in the district

·         Create a video introducing myself to the entire district

·         Begin Monday memo

·         Meet each campus principal

·         Start making my rounds to each school over the course of two months

Activities:

·         Create a video that introduces myself and my philosophy on education

·         Create a Monday memo form that will outline my vision for the district

·         Hold a principals meeting to explain any changes and my expectations for the district.  During this I would personally walk around the room and meet with the campus principals.

·         Sometimes during the month I will begin visiting schools based on location.

Resources

·         Technology department

·         Computer

·         Meeting room

·         School vehicle

Goal: Build a professional learning community that promotes implementation of the best practices in the classroom.

Objective: 

·         Board, administration will be able to work cohesively

·         Maintain visibility in the schools and community

·         Establish evaluation criteria for all district programs

Activities:

·         Establish goals and district priorities with the board and administration present.  These goals will be established within the first month. 

·         I will continue to attend major event throughout the district and community.  I will also send out a Monday memo to parents and community members separate from the memo I send to staff and teachers.

·         I will work with our budget office, HR, the Board, and district administration in developing assessment criteria for our entire program.  My goal will be to eliminate all non-essential programs that are not producing, in order to use those resources for programs that will benefit the district.

Resources:

·         Meeting room

·         Job descriptions

·         Community calendar (to assign district administration to certain duties)