Standard Three: Cultural Leadership
Element IIIa - Focus on Collaborative Work Environment
The principal/assistant principal understands and acts on the understanding of the positive role that a collaborative work environment can play in the school’s culture.
The principal/assistant principal understands and acts on the understanding of the positive role that a collaborative work environment can play in the school’s culture.
Our English II students took their first benchmark assessment in October. Once we got the results back, all of the English teachers in the district completed a form analyzing student results and strategies for closing district-wide gaps. Following the district meeting, I met with our school's English teachers and we completed our own form (below) that was focused solely on the BHS students. We then took a look at some "next steps" as a group and worked to focus on fixing some of the issues that they felt came out of the analysis.
As the chair of the newly formed Digital Learning Team at BHS, I led the initial meeting with our team and a representative from the Golden Leaf Foundation who grant-funded digital learning initiatives in our district. In this meeting, we completed this rubric to determine where our school currently was with respect to digital learning. I facilitated discussion of these standards in order for us to determine where our focus needed to be in order to be more prepared for digital learning. This plan was the driver for the work that we focused on in our monthly technology-related professional development with our Instructional Technology Facilitator.
Element IIIb - School Culture and Identity
The principal/assistant principal develops and uses shared vision, values and goals to define the identity and culture of the school.
The principal/assistant principal develops and uses shared vision, values and goals to define the identity and culture of the school.
As a part of our graduate school curriculum, we were tasked with creating a digital story to convey the story of our school community. Along with another fellow at my school, we created the video below in order to tell the story of Bunn High and the surrounding community. We interviewed several community stakeholders and weaved their stories together to show how they impact the work of the school and the lives of the students within it. This helped us to realize that the school community in Bunn is much more than what is inside the four walls of BHS.
One of the biggest events of the school year for the Bunn community is homecoming. Students work all week to earn points through various activities to win the spirit stick for their class. At the end of the week, students have a pep rally before going home on Friday in preparation for the parade that occurs prior to the homecoming game. This year I was given the privilege of opening the pep rally by addressing the student body and getting them ready for the rally and the game. It was an honor to be able to start the pep rally and students responded well. Below is the agenda from the pep rally.
Element IIIc - Acknowledges Failures; Celebrates Accomplishments and Rewards
The principal/assistant principal acknowledges failures and celebrates accomplishments of the school in order to define the identity, culture and performance of the school.
The principal/assistant principal acknowledges failures and celebrates accomplishments of the school in order to define the identity, culture and performance of the school.
Prior to our October staff meeting, each administrator was asked to add names of staff who had gone above and beyond in the previous month to help students to a shared document. Once we had the names compiled, we worked with our Instructional Technology Facilitator to create a page of digital badges that teachers could print or add to their email signature line. Full webpage available here. These WOW badges were awarded throughout the year, this is from October's staff meeting. Staff are receptive to the badges and like that they were more streamlined and cost-effective than printing out certificates each month.
Element IIId - Efficacy and Empowerment
The principal/assistant principal develops a sense of efficacy and empowerment among staff which influences the school’s identity, culture and performance.
The principal/assistant principal develops a sense of efficacy and empowerment among staff which influences the school’s identity, culture and performance.
During the district's PD day at the beginning of the year, I worked with another fellow to lead a session on a new approach to flipping the classroom based on a training we received in the program. We led two sessions to help teachers become more comfortable with the idea since we knew that our district was becoming more involved in digital learning this year. We had teachers from schools across the district attend our session and taught them practical applications for what flipped learning could look like without requiring students to do any work at home where they may not have internet access. We then had them create a reflective video to share what they would do with the information they had received in our session. Below are our description in the app, tweets from the session, and our culminating activity - a video reflection from our attendees.