Year 2 of the Northern Tier Leadership Course - for Year 1, see the previous post.

This last year, I added to my resources, Michael Fullan's Motion Leadership and Mike Schmoker's Focus on the Essentials. I was so taken by Schmoker's book and the simplicity of it that I garnered a copy for each of my certified staff. We read it as a book study and listened to a webinar of highlights. We continue to use this resource as a guide in our multi-age, multi-level classrooms. When we find it difficult to manage so many different levels and curriculum outcomes, we focus on the essentials. Fullan's book is a reminder for me not to go too fast and to take my staff with me on the journey.

This year I spent more time and energy enabling others to act and it's paid off big time. Staff have taken the lead in the creative side as well as working with students to improve their learning. Teachers have been taking turns to be my designate when I have to be away from the school and the teacher I share a class with has become more confident in her own abilities. I have been able to trust and entrust the student learning to capable hands. Supervision has become a two-way street. I know that we still have a ways to go, but I'm sure that we are heading in the right direction.

At the beginning of the year, and now here at the end, we revisit our vision, fine tuning as we go. We involve our students, each other, and the parents in the decision-making process. The newest version of the vision will be created in poster format and hung in the classrooms and common areas with pride for next year and for new staff coming on.

We continue to solidify relationships and keep our culture and environment positive. Students who were once sullen and acted out are now focusing on their learning more often and seeing a glimmer of hope in their futures. We still have some students who don't believe they can succeed, but we will continue to work on them, breaking down their barriers and giving them encouragement. We focus on a small number of goals, use high-yield strategies and are more specific and direct in our actions to meet the needs of our students.

So what did I learn? I learned that I need to share my vision of learning and teaching because it is the right thing to do; this vision inspires learning and teaching in others. Encouraging the heart is possibly the most important aspect of developing relationships, modelling the way motivates others to do the same, and challenging the process facilitates change for the better. These last two years, I have taken many risks and have been rewarded ten-fold. The added benefit - improved learning for kids!

Northern Tier Leadership Professional Development

For the past two years, I have been involved in a leadership course designed for the Zone 1 administrators. On May 2, we had our last workshop of year 2 and we were asked to reflect on what we learned. It's difficult to wrap it all up with string and present it, but here goes.
In Year 1, I learned that I needed to show my staff, students and community what my vision is for the school and keep it front and center when making decisions and entertaining change. I spent most of year 1 continuing to build relationships and facilitate culture change for the better. The staff were beginning to trust me and believe me when I said I would do something. That's because I did it. There were a few issues I had to deal with, but because the staff could see the benefits of change, and because I kept them in the loop, they came along with me. By working on the vision together, and designing it to suit our students and community, we were able to make it happen. Through the use of a connections tool that I appropriated from another leadership course, we were able to see the individual contribution to the vision and the growth in each other as an instructional team. Individual encouragement and acknowledgement made people feel valued and inspired them to take risks and talk about their accomplishments. We had people talking about their lessons in the staff room and willingly staying after school to discuss a strategy!

Kouzes and Pozner's The Leadership Challenge had me modelling the way, encouraging the heart, and challenging the process. I don't expect staff to do something I'm not willing to do myself. For example, my supervision schedule is just as heavy as any teacher on staff. I take part in the professional development that the staff do and I teach half time, sometimes more than that. We began challenging the process by timetabling for literacy programming, taking time to develop overarching questions to answer in the core subjects, and improving learning for kids by looking at what they need and teaching them that particular skill or knowledge. Some curriculum outcomes took a back seat while we taught students to be kind to one another, to read, to learn basic math facts and so on. If the students were interested and engaged in a particular project, we would keep it going, building in skills all the while the students thought they were having fun.

Our resources included the Alberta curriculum for sure, but we added Dawn Reithaug's Three Tiers of Intervention for Reading from the year before and Making a Difference from Alberta Learning's Setting the Direction initiative. We established a school wide approach to encouraging creativity by timetabling our options to include a wide range of choice and mixing up the grades so as to create a more family oriented atmosphere. We were successful and many of our fun activities involved the Junior High students planning activities that would include their younger counterparts. We all ate together and played together. An enormous amount of energy was expended, but it takes energy to make energy. I have never felt so alive!

For year 2, see the next post!