LEADERSHIP CULTURE
Administrative leadership is the starting point of a positive school culture. Building a sense of trust and community among staff members helps to keep moral high to create a positive learning atmosphere. Years of studies produced by Kouzes & Posner (2012) have found modeling, inspiring, challenging, enabling others and positive encouragement are five useful techniques to effective leadership. City High School creates multiple opportunities for collaboration with teachers throughout the school with a variety of activities. By creating a collaborative environment, built on trust, the leadership team can work with teachers to create the vision, mission and values statements for the institution.
Assess
The culture of a school relies strongly on the administrative team. The following section will discuss strategies used for effective leadership techniques.
Brown Bag
Teachers are given regular opportunities to give and receive feedback in the form of shared unit planners, weekly department meetings, and built in professional development opportunities during the year. A brown bag lunch is an opportunity to learn from peers during a lunch period (Heathfield, 2019). At City High School teachers sign up to teach a short demonstration of their lesson, observers are encouraged to ask questions and learn from their peers. An inspiring school climate of sharing and respect creates a positive culture for achievement. A key performance indicator that can be monitored is the positive learning culture for all teachers and cross-curricular collaboration.
Baldrige
According to an article written by Scott (2017) the Baldrige is a method for organizations to effectively increase their performance and results. The Baldrige is a data driven system of strategies for organizations to follow in relation to the effective functioning of the administration (Winn & Cameron, 1998). Following successful planning and execution techniques can help an administration set the proper tone for a successful, supportive, safe and collaborative work place. Staff can develop trust in leadership and the mission, vision and values of the organization when they are included in the creative process of developing the statements for the institution.
Development
Administration can utilize multiple leadership techniques to effectively support teachers in the creation of mission, vision and values statements. At City High School the school is grouped into different houses with different academic focuses. This allows specific teachers to focus on specific groups of students and give them more individualized attention when necessary. In these houses teachers are given the opportunity to help revise and recreate the mission, vision and values statements for City High School and its unique needs.
Conclusion
Leadership is the foundation a strong institution is built upon. Guiding teachers by creating a supportive and respectful environment for learning creates a positive cultural atmosphere. Creative collaboration of a schools vision, mission and values statements help to provide desired collaborative opportunities teachers need to feel shared educational community values. Multiple opportunities for growth and professional development throughout the school year give teachers access to information they need to be successful. The administrative team is the forefront to a successful institution, the moves they make, opportunities they provide and guidance they give create an environment conducive to learning.
Research
A description of collaborative learning models for City High School will be discussed in the following paragraphs. This will include descriptions of student engagement, key educational polices and conducive learning environment.
Competency Based Learning
A collaborative learning model that coincides with the vision statement for City High School is a focus on Competency Based Learning (CBL). CBL is an opportunity for students to master content of a class to move to the next level of learning, giving students an opportunity to work at their own pace to complete course work (Brodersen, Yanoski, Mason, Apthorp, Piscatelli, 2017). Competences are explicit, measurable, transferable skills that empower students and proved them a conducive learning environment. Assessments are meaningful, challenging, positive learning experiences for students. Proper feedback throughout the learning process is one of the most effective ways for students to understand accountability and how it applies to their personal lives (Wormeli, 2006).
Opportunities for student engagement are provided by teachers in the form of specific and regular feedback. Fleenor, Lamb, Anton, Stinson, & Donen, (2011) describe students completing work is similar to sports teams practicing for games, students need multiple opportunities to fail and succeed, receive feedback and correct their mistakes. Student developmental competencies represent skills and dispositions that support success within and beyond the classroom. Key educational policies include school wide competencies of self-awareness, self-management, perseverance, relationship skills and social awareness. These competencies empower learning because they are specifically developed for the student body of City High School and their specific academic, social and cultural needs.
Deduce
A CBL learning environment gives students the opportunity to work collaboratively with one another and provides opportunities to empower students. This plan will be implemented in City High School utilizing distributed leadership with teachers in the school sharing the leadership functions in their lesson preparation. By using this leadership model students are exposed to cross-curricular collaboration connecting multiple subjects to the same competency. A key performance indicator will be collaborative assessment when grading student work. The data will be used to continue to create culturally aware lessons and assessments. This process assures all students are assessed equally based on competencies taught in the unit.
Conclusion
Opportunities for regular teacher collaboration are the heart of the CBL process. Teachers have opportunities to collect student data, share with others in their department and use that information to drive their lesson plans, assessments and units. Regular and useful feedback is given to students by utilizing rubrics for grading and details of assignments. When students can collaborate in small groups, teachers collaborate with one another to create culturally aware lessons and administrative leaders can guide teachers a school wide culture of achievement can be accomplished.