EDL 520 Leadership Disposition Reflection
EDL 520 Leadership Dispositions:
Leadership Disposition 4: To promote each student's academic success and well-being effective school leaders support intellectually rigorous and coherent systems of curriculum, instruction, and assessment.
Leadership Disposition 10: To promote each student's academic success and well-being effective school leaders utilize data to make school improvements to benefit all stakeholders.
Strike et. al. (2019) identify the following leadership components that align with the aforementioned Leadership Dispositions in this course. My goal and related action steps directly aligned with these components.
Component 1b: Builds Shared Leadership
Component 1c: Initiates Effective Communication
Component 2a: Demonstrate Competence as a School Leader
Component 2b: Fosters and Facilitates Continual Improvement
Component 2c: Promotes Professional Learning and Growth
Component 3b: Advocates for instruction that supports the needs of all learners
Component 4e: Manages Effectively
Background
Northridge Elementary identified staff and student wellness as priorities for the upcoming school year. Our existing Social Emotional Learning (SEL) curriculum is no longer meeting the diverse needs of our students and is lacking in common language and supports that promote SEL as a school-wide culture. In May we sent 8 staff members to a coaches training for the Sources of Strength (SOS) curriculum.
Sources of Strength in the elementary setting is a K-6 curriculum that uses a universal classroom approach to teaching and promoting protective factors using a mental health framework (Sources of Strength, n.d.). NRE is located in Douglas County, Colorado which has one of the highest youth suicide rates in Colorado and the nation (United Health Foundation, 2024). Together with neighboring counties with similar statistics and the state, Douglas County School District is focused on improving protective factors amongst youth through SEL curriculum and mental health support systems. SOS is the gold standard for evidence-based programs and practices related to suicide prevention and youth mental health (Sources of Strength, 2024).
Leadership Goal
By June 30, 2024 I will create a year-long plan for implementing the Sources of Strength (SOS) curriculum and coaching model that uses results from a stakeholder survey to establish a timeline and expectations for all participants.
Action Plan
The following steps were used over the course of six weeks:
- Meet with SOS planning team and outline desired year-long plan and coaching teams.
- Create a Google Form for the SOS survey and distribute to all staff.
- Compile results and share with SOS team using collaboration document
- Solicit feedback from SOS planning team and administrators
- Modify year-long plan and coaching teams to reflect participant buy-in
- Develop presentation slides for beginning of the year introduction to the SOS curriculum and coaching model.
Successes and Areas for Improvement
My objective for this activity was to create a collaborative team comprised of a diverse group of school staff to create and implement the SOS model. All of the team members attended the training in May and were both excited about the implementation and willing to share their knowledge with their colleagues, families and students.
The team succeeded in identifying steps to implementation through creation of a year-long plan and developing a professional development presentation to be held during teacher work week in August. Additionally, the team succeeded in utilizing and leveraging individual strengths to distribute the work evenly amongst the team members.
At this juncture I am not certain how I will improve upon this action plan. We will present our professional development in August and implement the SOS curriculum according to our year-long plan. I am certain that after the initial milestones are met I will be able to identify areas for improvement. For now I am extremely proud of the work our team has done over the summer and am excited to see how it is received by our staff.
Reflection
At the beginning of this course I had a concrete and singular understanding of both Leadership Dispositions. Through my coursework and especially my internship assignment, I have expanded my knowledge and understanding of both of these dispositions.
Disposition 4 requires school leaders to support curriculum, instruction and assessment. This seemed straightforward and my initial understanding was that my role as a school leader would be to identify curriculum, observe and coach instruction and analyze assessment data. In contrast, however, I have come to the conclusion that school leaders need to engage in all of these areas in order to fully understand the scope and complexity of the curriculum. I would not have been able to lead this initiative effectively without sharing in the SOS training with my team. Strike et. al. (2019) suggest that a leader's role in curriculum, instruction and assessment is to act as a mentor to staff through support, coaching and modeling in order to promote growth. I will continue to foster competency in this disposition through engaging in curriculum training and collaboration with staff in their lesson planning and data analysis process during our PLC meetings.
Disposition 10 requires school leaders to use data to improve outcomes for all stakeholders. Initially I believed that this related only to student assessment data and academics. Through reflection, experience and coursework I now understand that this should be expanded to qualitative data inclusive of staff members' feedback and observations of student engagement, behavior and social-emotional wellness. School leaders have a responsibility to build shared leadership and a school climate that is welcoming, safe (physically and emotionally), promotes a sense of belonging and respects the diverse learning needs of all students (Strike et. al., 2019). Through my SOS training and collaboration with members of my team, we identified staff wellness as an essential element of our school climate. I learned the importance of ensuring staff are engaged, supported and feel a sense of belonging so that they, in turn, can do the same for our students. It isn't enough to hand the teachers a new curriculum (especially an SEL curriculum). We need to create engagement and buy-in through allowing teachers to experience the lessons and participate in the experiences as learners before they can share the learning with their students.
“Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn.” - Benjamin Franklin
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