Interview With Middle School Principal Essay

plan for, monitor and reflect on their professional development. Learners will then be able to investigate and

Our professional development sessions are conducted weekly in a variety of subject areas, and the monthly school-wide session, using interactive reform activities, align with the Danielson Framework for Teaching (Danielson, 2013) to showcase best practices of teachers and to develop grade-level performance tasks, looking at students’ work to provide individual feedback that is aligned with the teaching rubric in order to show academic progress and growth in the target areas of ELA and Math.

Identifies skills, theories of change, program designs, partnerships, and ways of building schools where students achieve.

Strategies that are in place are teachers and administration walk-through with feedback for growth. The school also provides support for teachers whose performance was

Key performance measures relative to this action plan are that our SIP will identify Marzano instructional practices on a yearly basis as a school-wide focus for implementation and/or improvement (strategy 3). Also, student growth meetings will be held each fall between school administrators and teachers and will revolve around students at risk of falling behind their peers and student sub-groups that may be collectively behind the total student population, thus closing the achievement gap (strategy 4). Building administrators will be proactive in arranging time for instructional rounds to facilitate professional growth among teachers.

We all build strong relationships amongst our students and ourselves. Everyone works well for the benefit of all who come through our doors. Our longest working staff member has been here nineteen years, but we also have a couple of first year teachers starting out. The gender balance is nine males to twenty-one females. Our professional development is focused on our main district initiatives, which include: AIW (Authentic Intellectual Work), IPI (Instructional Practices Inventory), TLIM (The Leader in Me), Technology Integration, and Iowa Core. We have professional development time every Wednesday from 2:10-4:00. Professional development is a mix of building and district wide meetings.

The people that I interviewed at Pueblo del Sol Middle School were the Parent Liaison Susie Zavala and the Principal Alejandro Chavez. After coming up with the set of questions the my partner and I wanted to have answered we felt that it was best to interview two people at the school. Mrs. Zavala has been the parent liaison for -- years and Mr. Chavez has been the principal for -- years. Mr. Chavez comes from a family of educators and currently his brother Dr. Jacob Chavez is the Superintendent of a nearby school district. Both interviewees are Latino and seem to have a deep interest for the community and want to see our students and parents succeed. Both Mr. Chavez and Mrs. Zavala gave good insight on how to get parents more involved in

Assessing is a major priority in the school system because this is the only way principals are aware of the progress their students and teachers are producing. It is recommended that principals meet monthly with other administrators to stay up to date on the current changes in the curriculum, instruction, and assessments. The school leadership teams must ensure that they are choosing instructional works that have high success rates for enhancing student achievement. If the data results from the assessment show that the majority of students are not producing learning gains, the school’s principal should sit down with the teacher to discuss and reevaluate the lessons that are being taught.

Dawn Essig attended Mount Saint Mary College where she earned her BS in Political Science, Education, and Special Education. Dr. Essig also attended Marist College where she obtained a M.Ed. in Educational Psychology and then pursued her Doctorate in Teacher Leadership from Walden University. As an educator, Dr. Essig taught elementary through high school general and special education while serving as an adjunct professor at Marist College in the Education department. Dr. Essig’s extensive experience and knowledge in technology integration in school districts, certification as a Wilson Reading Specialist and use of MAP assessments and data to make instructional decisions led to being a well-qualified Professional Development Consultant for

I plan to implement needs-based activities that are identified by student data and teacher surveys. After gathering this data, I would hold separate professional development sessions for the different schools. The middle school teachers would work in groups while the high school teachers worked in groups. The two different groups described have many different contents and their topics vary greatly which is why I chose to hold separate sessions for each group. However, I believe that all of the groups would benefit from the introduction of new strategies in vocabulary development. Implementing vocabulary strategies to help improve student content knowledge would show great success in increasing student comprehension within these subjects. In order to make this process as manageable and effective as possible, the strategies would be presented by a veteran teacher in conjunction with the instructional coach to engage all faculty. Each session would be short and involve one to two easy to implement strategies. I feel it would be effective as the literacy coach to show the upside to each strategy. Using data from the veteran, “expert”, faculty member’s class, I would provide statistics that show results of each

Provided staff professional development on formative assessment, effective lesson planning, Professional Learning Communities, Marzano’s Instructional Strategies, and student friendly learning scales

During one of our professional development days in the week before school started, we spent an entire day reviewing the curriculum mapping process and began identifying the most essential standards and learning outcomes for students. One subtle indicator was that only two teachers demonstrated understanding about the importance of using assessment results to plan their first two weeks of lessons. One suggested that they would begin with a writing prompt to determine where students were in their narrative writing, and the other expressed the urgency to administer the reading assessment so that she could put her students in reading groups. Eighty percent of our staff were either longing for the

In regards to the Marzano Instructional Frameworks as a guide, building administrators and teachers will meet monthly to guide professional growth discussions, set goals and identify future professional opportunities. In addition, the district TPEP committee will meet monthly to plan and guide professional development that includes a teacher leader to provide evaluation and framework training. SIP will identify Marzano instructional practices on a yearly basis as a school-wide focus for implementation and/or improvement. Student growth meetings will occur each fall between school administrators and teacher and will revolve around students at risk of falling behind their peers and student sub-groups that may be collectively behind the total student population (closing the achievement gap). And finally, time will be made each quarter for instructional rounds to facilitate professional growth among

Administrators are challenged to develop professional development programs for their schools with the ultimate goal of addressing student achievement through improving or reinforcing current teaching practices. Unfortunately many administrators have a difficult time navigating the complicated process of deciding what needs to address as well as how to address them. In his article, “Leadership for Effective Change: Creating Intentionality Using Staff Development”, S. Michael Putman addresses how the Intentional Teaching Model (INTENT) gives administrators an almost step-by-step guide for developing professional development opportunities and activities to achieve their ultimate goal: student growth and achievement. The INTENT model is broken down into four interdependent phases: examinining the beliefs of the participants, identifying and establishing goals, deliberately modifying instructional practices, and consitatantly demonstrating goal aligned behaviors.

As we review and synthesize data of a district for planning school improvement, the following information is needed to access and determine the needs of a school. First, a thorough analysis of performance data must be reviewed to see how school districts measure up with state and federal accountability. During this process, it is very important that schools focus the performance indicators that will guarantee growth and success. School teams must refer to the districts mission and vision to guide the planning process. The performance indicators will provide data that will be beneficial in creating improvement strategies. So, after careful evaluation of the data, the next step would be to plan effective methods and strategies that will improve student achievement. Moreover, this plan should include needs, demographics and opportunities for students to be successful. Additionally, the baseline data is important information to include in the improvement plan.