In the Setting Direction I feel that I have done a lot for my current school in the past few months. Myself and one of our Vice Principals have set the direction for the school moving from only departmental PLCs to also having cross-curricular PLTs. These PLTs had 4 different focuses. Use of Technology in the classroom, Shared Practices, Learning Goals and Success Criteria and Differentiated Instruction. We decided to have these groups and then let teachers select which group that they wanted to be in.
I then developed planning forms for these groups so that at their first meeting their facilitator (which we also picked) could help the group set the direction for what they wanted to accomplish within the year.
The other project that I am involved in is with my schools NTIP group. I held a meeting where all the NTIP teachers wrote down what they wanted to learn about throughout the year. I found that many of them were logistical "stuff" and that there wasn't a lot about actually improving teaching practices. I then brought the list together and added in some topics that weren't listed. This made the list look staff made (and it was) and then these will be the topics that mentors will address with their NTIP teachers.
Moving to the future I find that I do fairly well in this category. I believe it is because I am well planned and like to be very organized (re the charts on the homepage with my personality testing results). This means going into a meeting with a plan and I expect others to do the same. 2 years ago I found that our school was always asking teachers to do a certain activity and that many of the teachers didn't know why or that it seemed contradictary to what we had just done (ex the deadline for developing our years departmental goals was before we knew what the school goal was). With this you had less buy in and still, even with things more planned, teachers have trouble buying in because they don't know if the plans will change. I think that the transparency of this idea and the long term plan needs to be communicated and shown (maybe with a graphic) linking what they school is doing with what the plan is and why. The teachers also need to know where these ideas came from and who came up with them. I think that my next step would be to help develop and show this plan and come up with more of these ideas myself instead of being told we are going to do PLTs this year can you organize them. I know that this will come with experience and a new position but I would like to develop my schools long term (3-5) year plan involving the SEF and transparent teacher input as I think it would be more effective. Next year if I am in an admin position I know I will have this opportunity. If I am not I am going to try and move on our Directions Committee (not usually done by dept heads in my school) to help improve this process.
I then developed planning forms for these groups so that at their first meeting their facilitator (which we also picked) could help the group set the direction for what they wanted to accomplish within the year.
The other project that I am involved in is with my schools NTIP group. I held a meeting where all the NTIP teachers wrote down what they wanted to learn about throughout the year. I found that many of them were logistical "stuff" and that there wasn't a lot about actually improving teaching practices. I then brought the list together and added in some topics that weren't listed. This made the list look staff made (and it was) and then these will be the topics that mentors will address with their NTIP teachers.
Moving to the future I find that I do fairly well in this category. I believe it is because I am well planned and like to be very organized (re the charts on the homepage with my personality testing results). This means going into a meeting with a plan and I expect others to do the same. 2 years ago I found that our school was always asking teachers to do a certain activity and that many of the teachers didn't know why or that it seemed contradictary to what we had just done (ex the deadline for developing our years departmental goals was before we knew what the school goal was). With this you had less buy in and still, even with things more planned, teachers have trouble buying in because they don't know if the plans will change. I think that the transparency of this idea and the long term plan needs to be communicated and shown (maybe with a graphic) linking what they school is doing with what the plan is and why. The teachers also need to know where these ideas came from and who came up with them. I think that my next step would be to help develop and show this plan and come up with more of these ideas myself instead of being told we are going to do PLTs this year can you organize them. I know that this will come with experience and a new position but I would like to develop my schools long term (3-5) year plan involving the SEF and transparent teacher input as I think it would be more effective. Next year if I am in an admin position I know I will have this opportunity. If I am not I am going to try and move on our Directions Committee (not usually done by dept heads in my school) to help improve this process.