Human Resources Leadership
Principals will ensure that the school is a professional learning community. Principals will ensure that process and systems are in place which results in recruitment, induction, support, evaluation, development and retention of high performing staff. The principal must engage and empower accomplished teachers in a distributive manner, including support of teachers in day-to-day decisions such as discipline, communication with parents/guardians, and protecting teachers from duties that interfere with teaching, and must practice fair and consistent evaluations of teachers. The principal must engage teachers and other professional staff in conversations to plan their career paths and support district succession planning.
Element 4A: Professional Development/ Learning Communities
The school executive ensures that the school is a professional learning community.
An administrator must never forget that their role as an educator is not vacated the moment they receive their promotion. In fact, adept administrators are the most important educators in the building because they are the educators of the teachers. Professional Learning Communities and appropriate Professional Development training carefully and intentionally selected by the school leaders help staff embrace the mentality that we are all life-long learners. Our education should not stop upon receipt of a diploma, rather amazing administrators help their staff find value in collaboration with colleagues and other industry professionals to continually enhance and enrich the teaching practice. This year I worked to lead staff meetings which focused on data analysis, worked and attended professional learning communities and met with new teachers to give advice on classroom management and common first-year teacher mistakes.
Leading Professional Development
Element 4B: Recruiting, hiring, placing and mentoring of staff
The school executive establishes processes and systems in order to ensure a high-quality, high-performing staff.
The school executive establishes processes and systems in order to ensure a high-quality, high-performing staff.
Our school hosted a district job fair for upcoming East Carolina University graduates. At this event, perspective teachers had the opportunity to tour Bunn Elementary, Bunn Middle and Bunn High Schools, network with current teachers who are employed with Franklin County Schools, and participate in one-on-one interviews with the potential for a contingency contract to be offered at the end of the interview. I have worked with the Franklin County Schools Retention and Recruitment team for several years prior to my residency and was able to assist with the coordination and implementation of this event.
Element 4C: Teacher and Staff Evaluation
The school executive evaluates teachers and other staff in a fair and equitable manner with the focus on improving performance and thus improving achievement.
Teachers and staff entrust their school executives to provide coaching opportunities, honest feedback, constructive criticism and praise when it comes to their teaching practice. A leader must be skilled in socio-emotional skills and have a keen sense of emotional intelligence when deciding upon the best way to give each individual teacher their feedback. The best principals act as coaches for their teachers rather than judges. In order for this relationship to be as prosperous and mutually respectful as possible, administrators must make an effort to stop by classrooms for reasons other than to conduct a formal observation; these could include routine walk-thrus or short, friendly visits. These actions show teachers their leaders are genuinely interested in learning more about their class as a whole and would like to find opportunities to give praise for a job well done or to provide a coaching tip. In my professional practice, I frequently refer to two texts, Teach Like a Champion by 2.0 by Doug Lemov and Leverage Leadership by Paul Bambrick-Santoyo and Brett Peiser, to help me provide my staff with suggestions for how to improve classroom management, establish routines and make the most of their day to day instructional time. I have found these books to be invaluable resources to keep close at hand when coaching staff members. Following a classroom visit, walk-thru, or formal observation, I do my best to provide immediate feedback and will schedule a follow-up time with the teacher within 48 business hours to share my observations and new ideas. As a teacher, I always found I respected my leaders more when they made coming back to share their thoughts about my class a priority, and I want my teachers to feel that same sense of respect from me as their leader.
Learning Walk Log Sample