Strategic Leadership
"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."
Standard 1A describes how the leader can strengthen the organization by anchoring stakeholders in our mission and vision.
Standard 1B describes how the leader can lead change toward school improvement with frequent communication to all stakeholders involved.
- This year at our school I was able to lead by example as we incorporating the No Nonsense Nurturing and Restorative Justice frameworks into our culture. I have participated in professional developments around the topic and lead a full staff discussion about the success of our implementation in the first year. At staff meetings, I demonstrate the use of community building circles at the beginning of the meeting a reinforce their importance as an integral part of our culture. Taking the time to lead the staff in an initiative in the same manner as we expect our teachers to lead their classrooms in the opening circle initiative sends the message that justice with restoration is important to me and the administrative team.
Artifact 6: Staff Meeting Agenda I created that details how I lead change by leading Opening Circles and Professional Development on our NoNonSense Nurtering Initiatives.
Standard 1C describes how the leader can structure school improvement initiatives around goals and values of the organization.
- As a member of the School Improvement team, I work collaboratively with teachers, parents and community members. I attend 2 School Improvement teams monthly and contribute data and ideas as we create opportunities toward continuous school improvement with our IndiStar Indicators.
- I co-facilitated the opening whole school improvement meeting where we collaboratively selected high leverage indicators to complete for staff success. We used a scaffolded selection process where staff selected indicators they feel the school should work toward mastery on. We drilled down from the entire list of indicators to the top four the school would focus on this year through rounds of majority votes. As our school works toward strategically accomplishing our improvement goals, I send emails or have personal conversations praising staff for implementing the strategies of the school improvement plan.
Standard 1D describes how the leader can create school leadership and decision making opportunities for stakeholders.
- I led the effort to create a team to collaborate to create the theme and design of program. I intentionally invited teachers that valued creativity, student empowerment, and a positive student experience. The collaborative environment I led resulted in creative thinking from the members and the idea to utilize external relationships to have the Edgecombe County Sheriff be the guest speaker at the program.
- I communicated via email and personal conversation to project leads about performance ideas, technology needs for performance and program transition logistics.
- When planning the school Black History program, I created an opportunity for staff to demonstrate leadership and decision making. I communicated the theme of the program and teachers were responsible for selected a project leader, and designing their grade levels performance idea.
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I created this digital story using the iMovie software to capture the essence of our program in a video to upload to youtube. The digital recording reached over 300 stakeholders because I was able to share this memory with our community through Facebook.
As a participant in DLP I received professional development focused on what distinguished leadership in standard 1 entails. Below is an assessment and reflection on the significance of Strategic Leadership to be an effective school leader.
"Distinguished Leadership in Practice."
"Presented by NCPAPA”