Essay Personal Statement

Hmmm………What shall I tell you about me? You, the person who will decide my fate, my fate as to whether I would go to CU-Boulder, go live in Colorado, go snowboarding in the mountains, meet lots of interesting people, and have the most wonderful experience…I better make myself sound worthy. First off, I want you to know that I'm an unparalleled individual, whose outlook on life is of total optimism. Through out my 18 years, I've become freinds with people from all walks of life. I've learned to empathize with just about every one of them, gaining the greatest understanding in a variety of remarkable characters. One of my favorite, a homeless lady who's called Polly, tells the most incredible stories of love and the many

Building relationships, developing leadership, and focusing on our school as a community will create an environment where students are building a future for themselves. By looking at what worked in the past while also looking at the future, our school community is more likely to be able to come together to create the school that our students truly need. As a school principal, I am dedicating myself to improving the educational experiences of my students and staff. I will constantly work to build a successful school community through collaboration, hard work, and

“Our main goal is to create a space that brings together all kinds of students to help them raise awareness and celebrate differences in our inclusive school climate.”

I want my school to be a place where everyone feels confident and safe when they enter the building. I have high expectations for all students, and I encourage my staff to challenge students academically. We need to prepare students with 21st- century skills and utilize the different tools in technology. We are a team, and family at

This is Mary McLeod Bethune School of North Lawndale in Chicago, and I am the new principle this year. Due to the poor economy around the school, things have been left to the way side, but I pray help give some hope back. Students are set back and 8th grade for some are their big celebration but I want to see them graduate high school. I want to be sitting in the audience at high school graduation and go those are my kids. Some issues at Bethune are based in the school makeup and location, teachers, readings levels, and the children encouragement.

My husband and I began our family shortly after I obtained an undergraduate degree. In just a few years, we had four children under the age of seven. I was managing a large household and raising our children in a stable, nurturing environment during pivotal early years. Consequently, I was not active in the workforce. As a stay at home mother, I was available to volunteer at school when my eldest child entered kindergarten fourteen years ago. After several years of serving as a school volunteer and being named the 2009 Volunteer of the Year, I gradually progressed to substitute teaching in order to continue building my educational experiences.

After reviewing the safety procedures of the school and its district’s policies on safety, even though the superintendent has some accountability when it comes to school safety .Most of the

As the principal, I want to help develop and guide the climate of the school but in order to do that, I need to have and understanding and respect of the culture of the school and the teachers, parents, staff, and students. The culture is the traditions and values of a school, where as the climate is the feel of the school as you are on the school grounds. For this reflective essay, I would be a new principal at a new school, so the teachers may or may not have all worked together before and there would not be an established culture & climate, with the exception of uncertainty and or excitement. This would provide the staff and the community the opportunity to develop, build, and the culture and climate together. I would start with meeting with the teachers & staff individually, I would also provide a survey to see what they believe are the needs for developing our new school with high expectations for all students. After meeting individually, I would hold our first staff meeting (I would provide food, drinks, little incentives - ) and I would share the survey data as well as data on student achievements from all the schools in the district. This data would guide us in the future directions for our students success. I would then show the YouTube video

At my school (South Middle School), the focus is on “restorative justice and restorative practices” and “school climate and prevention”. Extending the reach to the community and giving more student leadership opportunities can make a positive difference. Because South has the vision to develop all five of the listed domains, I believe our school will evolve. With time, I’m hopeful that we develop a responsive continuum of care from K-12 district-wide.

As principal new to a situation I would take some time to move about the school listening and talking to all constituents. While I might be excited and anxious to create change or perhaps have pressure from the district to do so, I would move forward cautiously with an awareness of the impact any change would impose on the existing culture.

1. As a school administrator, name 3 things you can do to increase positive school climate in your school and explain why each is important.

I feel that the more information I know about the situation at the school, the better I will be at implementing the right amount of change. I want a clear understanding of where our school stands in fulfilling the vision and mission of the school from these key people. Do they feel that the vision and mission is in need of change? If so, why and how? What policies, programs and procedures do they feel are working at the school? What do they feel needs to be changed and why? These observations and discussions will serve two purposes; gaining information about how the school has been run up to this point and pinpointing those individuals who could possibly take on a leadership role in the school and helping in the implementation of any

Climate is an area of a schools environment that most intrigues me from a principal’s impact point of view. A toxic climate leads to a lot of dissatisfaction and dissent among all parties involved which has a direct impact on the learning environment for students. Holy Family was a brand new system when I started and with that Wahlert got a brand new principal as the previous principal became the CEO. From what I understand, the previous principal was a very good systems thinker who had moved the school in an outcomes based system. Once he moved on and the new system was put into place, incidentally also the same time I was hired, there became factions within the school. The short version of the rest of the story is that the climate of the school was unpleasant as you hand the previously created factions and then resentment towards the new teachers who didn’t understand life around them.

As a principal, I am responsible for motivating and engaging all the stakeholders in the school community I lead. It is clear that a principal cannot improve the school’s outcome on his/her own; therefore, by establishing a

Developing, working towards and sharing a vision of learning has been a large focus of my internship and school year. At the beginning of the year, we set our focus as a school around social-emotional learning and ensuring that each student felt connected to a trusted adult in the school. We looked at our school climate data from last year and as a leadership team, we developed school wide and classroom specific activities focused on making connections with students. in addition, the leadership team and I set our school wide goal tied to teacher evaluations around increasing the percentage of students who felt connected to teachers. “School Climate Score for Student Connectedness will increase from 66% to 76%.” The school climate survey took place in the Social Studies classrooms on Thursday, November, 16. I also worked with the school administrators to help facilitate some activities, such as creating school wide behavior expectations with both the students and the staff. This directly correlated with the development of our school improvement plan which we worked on as a leadership team throughout the year.