Standard One: Strategic Leadership
Standard One describes how the principal leads the effort to create the school’s vision, mission, and goals based on its core values and beliefs. The principal continually challenges the school community to redefine itself so students are prepared for the future. The principal articulates a vision and strategies. The School Improvement plan provides the structure for the vision. The principal creates processes to distribute leadership throughout the school.
Philosophy of Leadership Statement:
Standard 1A: School mission, vision and strategic goals
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I created this video as a way to showcase the vision of Douglas Creative Arts and Sciences Magnet Elementary School to potential magnet families applying for DES. I embedded common language used at DES, highlighted how the magnet theme is infused into our curriculum, and advertised how an education at Douglas is different than other schools because our vision for students is different. This video helped eliminate physical participation in a tour as a barrier for knowing Douglas, and gave families who couldn’t come to scheduled visits an opportunity to understand the “why” behind Douglas and what it stands for. |
Standard 1B: Leading Change
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Part of the School Improvement Plan goals for the 2019-2020 school year at Douglas Elementary includes creating a common language around behavior management and expectations. I led a meeting with grade levels around drafting a new behavior referral process. This process involved gathering input from teachers and staff, implementing new changes, and progress monitoring the implementation. At the end of the first quarter, I hosted a meeting with grade-levels who communicated they needed additional support. The assistant principal and I used protocols and processes to determine which areas of behavior management we would focus on, and together with the teachers, drafted a plan for implementation and accountability. This artifact shows the meeting agenda outlining how we would determine what further changes we would focus on.
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During the 2019-2020 school year Douglas Elementary School decided to move towards a more restorative model for discipline and focus on strengthening student-teacher relationships. As the champion for this project, I created this logic model to outline how to frame these change to teachers and what steps we would take to ensure buy-in among the teachers who will be involved in the changes. The model was used to propose the changes to the administration and walk through how we could enhance student outcomes as well as how we would guide teachers through changes in ideology and practice.
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Standard 1C: School Improvement Plan
The January School Improvement team meeting included a review of several initiatives that are currently underway at DES for the 2019-2020 school year. Updates from SIP committee members who are managing each action step were asked to provide an update to the team on progress. As a leader of the behavior management changes at DES, I am including what updates on the on-going behavior management revision process I would have shared. During the semester, based on guidance from the school improvement data we made changes to our current discipline model. At this meeting I would have shared behavior data from the first semester, and gathered feedback from staff on how the process feels for teachers.
As part of a classwork assignment for our School Improvement course I was asked to analyze the data available for and create a SIP goal and action-steps to move the school forward. After analyzing available data on test scores, attendance, graduation rates and teacher grades, as well as speaking with stakeholders, I identified data tracking of formative and summative assessments in classrooms as an area of growth. The achievement levels on standardized testing for the school designated us historically as low-performing. l aimed to create a system for tracking mid-year achievement of students that would help us calibrate if student performance is on track. The link to the final school improvement goal, as well as action steps related to the goal are linked to the right. While this process was done individually, it mimics the process that a school leader and improvement team would walk through together to create goals of improvement for the school year, and how to progress monitor those goals.
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Due to the sensitive nature of this artifact, it is only accessible by NCSU program evaluators.
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Standard 1D: Distributive Leadership
Distributive leadership is finding ways to empower other individuals in the building to take ownership of the successes and failures of students and staff. This artifact is a memo written by a fourth-grade teacher at Douglas Elementary School; I believe this e-mail chain helps highlight how I empowered the teacher who came to me with both a problem and a solution to be the face of that solution and make changes. Our teachers from the modular unit on our campus were struggling with student behavior during dismissal; the busses were oftentimes late and students were no longer listening to the expectations of some of the teachers in the waiting area. A teacher came to me for assistance due to my prior meetings with the teams on classroom behavior management. I encouraged the teacher to speak with several of the grade levels and create a plan they thought would work for their team. I assured the teacher I'd be supportive of whatever plan the teachers themselves thought would work best for the situation. Since I am not in the gym during this time, but rather at the bus loop, I felt it important that the teachers come up with a system they thought would work for them and be manageable. I assured the team I’d be supportive to help in whatever capacity they needed. The teachers sent me a mock-email detailing their plan before providing direction for the rest of their grade-level.
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