Educational Leaders Are Responsible For Adapting Instruction

Once the team’s vision had been established, we became very honest about our personal and professional strengths and our target areas of growth. From this conversation, the team was able to clearly define the focus and responsibilities of the PLC Leader and individual team members. The meeting was successful and everyone is excited about working together. Our vision will remain in the forefront of our meetings, reminding us to always provide a climate in our classrooms that fosters thoughtful and respectful consideration of all viewpoints.

The ever-changing landscape of education and school accountability has given rise to a renewed focus on shared leadership. In the past, the principal was viewed as the primary decision maker within a school. However, Glickman (1989) points out that it is impossible for school principals to effectively complete all the necessary instructional and managerial tasks within schools. He contends that some teachers have more leadership abilities than the actual administrators and that “in successful schools, principals aren’t threatened by the wisdom of others, instead, they cherish it by distributing leadership” (Glickman, 1989, p. 8).

In this chapter, Fullan begins by maintaining that principals who are effective lead learners are necessarily also good managers, because they understand that having clear routines is essential for school improvement.” (57) He quotes from Viviane Robinson’s Student-Centered Leadership to both underscore the previous point and emphasize that successful principals take an active learning stance: “The principal who makes the biggest impact on learning is the one who attends to other matters as well, but, most important, ‘participates as a learner’ with teachers in helping move the school forward.” (58) Fullan also borrows from Helen Timperley’s work in responding to the question, Who is in a principal’s class? The principal’s class consists of “team leaders who in turn can leverage the learning of other teachers in their group”

The professional learning community will develop the steps of transforming our schools. It will use these eight steps as professional development protocols in reducing the dropout rate and increasing college and career readiness.

Roberts, S. & Pruitt, E. (2003). Schools as Professional Learning Communities: Collaborative Activities and Strategies for Professional Development. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.

A. School Improvement Initiatives: We discussed two school improvement initiatives: 1. Professional Learning Communities’ (PLC) continue to dominate the intervention and improvement discussion. This year the San Juan School District (SJSD) schools went from district based PLC’s

Dr. Fremstad has been instrumental in the implementation of Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) at West Fargo High School. She understands the power of teacher collaboration and has led the charge to train and monitor the program with fidelity. Jennifer has inspired educators to share student evidence of learning and extend intervention or enrichment learning opportunities based on the data. In addition, she advocates on the importance of frequent classroom visitations with her leadership team and establishes annual visitation goals to support teachers and

In our school, fostering nurturing professional learning communities is imperative to shaping our school’s culture.

Traditionally, teacher development typically occurs through trial and error in the isolated confinements of each teacher’s classroom with some periodic whole-group professional development (Goddard & Goddard, 2007). Within the past few decades, many schools and districts, including ours, have considered and experimented with Professional Learning Communities (PLC) as an alternative framework in guiding a more efficient development program for their teachers. PLCs are focused on enhancing student learning through developing teacher practices. The concept of PLC relies on using structured collaborative sessions amongst teachers within the school to build internal capacity. Through PLCs, teachers critically reflect on current

Administrators and teachers must work together to develop the PLC plan addressing the needs of their students. This means administrators need to trust teachers and allow them to work in a way that is autonomous from leadership. Delegating more responsibilities to staff was a way of creating a more knowledgeable community that could cope with the diversity of demands created by schools moving from being relatively simple organizations to highly complex ones. It was also recognized as in accord with the rhetoric of distributed leadership recommended as a strategy for school improvement and raising pupil attainment (Bolam et al. 2005, Webb, et al.

According to the authors of this article (Donaldson, Marnik, Mackenzie, & Ackerman, 2009), principals need to concentrate on the development of skills and behaviors in order to be successful in motivating, leading, and changing the direction of a school. The successful principal understands that there exists a fine balance of caring for others and the need to accomplish specific tasks (Donaldson, Marnik, Mackenzie, & Ackerman, 2009).

investigate how my personal ability to manage change has shaped my leadership of educational change. This discussion will be blended with examples of change in my personal life, my own leadership experience and references to the literature in the field of leading educational change.

I’ve had quite the learning experience over the last few weeks. I had a chance to obtain valuable information and support from my principal. I learned so much about the administration role and how difficult it can be. When I began my interview, I felt overwhelmed and excited at the same time. My principal is also my mentor; she has been very supportive of me pursuing my dreams to be in administrator. As I conducted my interview I learned so much about the principal’s role. I asked my principal a series of questions. The questions were based on the Interstate School Leadership Licensure Consortium Standards (ISLLC). My first question was based on educational programs. The educational programs at any school need balance. While we live in a test results world, there needs to be a balance of focus. I look at the type of student I want my school to produce and I surround myself with a faculty and other staffs that not only share in the mission, but also will help every student succeed. In addition, as an administrator, I need to provide my faculty and staff with the tools and resources necessary to make everyone feel successful.

The principal’s role in developing positive community relations sets the tone for communication patterns, partnership formation and/or alienation (Fiore, 2013). There are many tasks that the principal has that is important to school and community relations. Some of those are being a good listener, diplomatic and tactful and all situations. They also have to promote the open door policy to be free to communicate with students, parents, and their staff. They also have to inform the superintendent and community about good and bad things that are

Effective school leadership today must combine the traditional school leadership duties such as teacher evaluation, budgeting, scheduling, and facilities maintenance with a deep involvement with specific aspects of teaching and learning. Effective instructional leaders are intensely involved in curricular and instructional issues that directly affect student achievement (Cotton, 2003). The writer of this paper acknowledges that school principals should play the role of instructional leaders, not just a school manager. The reality is that are many demands on a principals time and management skills making it difficult for most of them to spend time in classrooms, when performing teacher evaluation. Principals often make sure that teachers