LEADERSHIP IN PRACTICE
Ensure Resources
The building leader needs to ensure that the following resources are available to allow staff to carry out the activities essential to learning.
- People (internal/external)
- Time (job-embedded)
- Training/Professional Development
- Materials
- Money
How will you ensure the needed resources to facilitate the instructional work in the building?
Use this worksheet to walk through different types and areas of resources.
Monitor for Implementation and Collaboration
Monitoring implementation of practices learned though professional development in the four areas of instructional focus and how teachers are working collaboratively to help each other succeed ensures that work to improve instructional effectiveness and increase student outcomes is occurring as intended. When this work goes unmonitored, implementation of professional learning leading to improved teacher performance and improved student outcomes are left to chance which often results in unmet goals with little or no success.
There are lots of ways to monitor – but monitoring for implementation and collaboration should not be about compliance. It should be about how to make implementation stronger through refinement of practice, reflection, and collaboration.
Tools are listed below that may be used to monitor implementation and collaboration to ensure effective teaching/learning practices are implemented with fidelity, assessments are administered, data is used to inform instruction, and teachers are working together to help one another. The practice profiles and fidelity checklists are referenced throughout the essential planning inventory tool referenced at the end of this presentation.
- Practice Profiles: Implementation with fidelity requires clearly described implementation criteria. The Practice Profile framework outlines implementation criteria using a rubric structure with clearly defined practice-level characteristics (NIRN, 2011).
- Fidelity Checklist: Fidelity checklists are designed for frequent checking on the fidelity of implementing a practice. Fidelity should be monitored ‘early and often’ (Harn, Parisi, & Stoolmiller, 2013) especially early in implementation.
- Walk Through/Observation: Observations include a coach or an administrator walking through the classroom to see what elements of a particular practice are visible and being implemented. They give specific information on look-fors that can provide valuable information on implementation. Could also be used in a peer coaching setting. It is non-evaluative.
- Peer Observation: Peer observations provide teachers with opportunities to observe implementation look-fors and provide feedback to one another, as a form of collaborative professional development.
- Survey: Surveys present options for those who are implementing a practice to provide feedback on how implementation is going. Data and feedback from surveys can also provide some of the look-fors on a walkthrough tool.
What resources are needed to facilitate and implement the instructional work of the building?
Do you have a process in place to monitor teams for collaboration and are they running effectively and efficiently? If yes, is it feasible to maintain?
Do you need to train others to help monitor practice and collaboration? What tools or resources do you need to perform this task?