Instructional Leader #2

As mentioned in the previous post, I am in pursuit of that illusive first administrative position. After watching a couple of videos by Principal Kafele (here is the link to one of the videos), I have been challenged to take some time and think back to the various questions I have been asked in over the 15-20 interviews I have been on over the last few years. Honestly, it might be more, but you lose count after a while.

I first looked at Discipline in my earlier post, since that "could" be a major focus of an Assistant Principal's job. However, today, I am going to take some time to collect my thoughts on a topic that I feel is more important that maintaining Discipline: Raising Student Achievement. I understand the students can not learn unless they are safe and secure. I know the school's culture is immediately impacted if a school does not maintain some kind of order in the building.

After some thought, I have reflected on why we are in schools to begin with. In my opinion, we are there to get students to learn. Period. Whatever the program, method, pedagogy, or resources. We are expected to have our students learning and challenging themselves. That is where my role as Instructional Leader #2 comes in.

My job is to help/assist in creating a culture where learning is paramount for every student. That is why I believe that assisting all teachers on improving their classroom instruction is so important. Regardless of the number of years they have been teaching, improvement is reachable. It is the only way we keep pushing our school forward, by challenging ourselves to constantly improve the instruction in the classroom.

How can that be done? By being visible and accessible. As the Instructional Leader #2, I need to be in classrooms everyday to witness first hand what is going on the classrooms. I can not possibly begin a discussion with a teacher about improving strategies or methods without having been in the room to begin with. Also, I want to create a collegial relationship with the people I am responsible for supervising. Being visible, accessible, and helpful is a great way to start that important relationship.

The observation process is a way to document the improvement of the instruction in the classrooms. I understand that I will be involved in many discussions with teachers about lessons that I observed. I think it is important in the pre-conference meeting to specifically discuss what the teacher feels I should focus the observation on. It would make sense if there are maybe 3-5 main things I am looking for, that two of them would come from their improvement plan from the previous year. In my experience, teachers are asked to submit an improvement plan to help guide them for the next year. I would think that would be a great place to begin our discussion on what the observation will be centered on. This should be familiar to the educator considering they submitted it at the end of the previous year.

After spending time in the room, feedback on the lesson must be timely. I need to make sure I have that conversation soon after spending time in the classroom. The discussion needs to be centered on the agreed topics from the pre-conference meeting. I will be interested to hear the answers to these questions: What did you notice? What went well? If you could reteach this lesson, how would you do it differently? What are you going to do tomorrow to build off of today's lesson? How will you determine that the students did learn the topics?

The process of constantly trying to improve ourselves is critical to a thriving school community. Pushing each other to improve our instruction creates a culture of learning that helps raise student achievement. Knowing that they are supported, guided, and cared for will hopefully have more teachers trying different ways to get students to learn more. Who wouldn't want to work in a school like that?