Apr 29

Standard 6: Participate in the Grant Writing Process

With a group of grant writing team members in the All-boys program, I have lead the process of writing a grant to the Target Foundation for funds to allocate towards participating in the EDGE program at George Mason University. Since the field trip is relatively expensive for the amount of funding available and our school community’s family budget, I believe the Target Foundation grant would give us the opportunity to participate in this rewarding opportunity. This field trip experience would allow our All-boys program to participate in team building exercises to build teamwork, confidence, respect for each other, and many other important life skills.

The process of writing a grant was a rewarding experience because I was very unfamiliar with the entire process. Through working through the process with experienced individuals, I have gained significant insight into the tips or suggestions for being awarded the grant. These tips included the use of demographic information and data analysis to sway the award in your favor. Without these tips, I would have found the grant writing process to be difficult and most likely, the written grants wouldn’t be awarded.

In the future, I will use this rewarding experience to effectively write grants for my school. As I have observed many schools, the one common factor in all schools who have a wealth of resources is their overwhelming participation in grants. I hope to continuously look for grants that will not only provide more available funds for my programs, but will also provide valuable resources to my school community.

Apr 28

Standard 6: Student Advocacy Plan

Within the All-boys program, I have started an advocacy program (The House Council) that targets the two areas of growing concern for our middle school boys. One facet of the council is to provide a system for the All-boys program to voice their ideas and concerns to administration and house leaders (teachers). Secondly, it provides a platform to meet the social and emotional needs of middle school boys through discussing their social or emotional concerns.

From this program, I have learned how to facilitate and manage student groups to beneficially impact the school. When facilitating groups like these, I’ve learned that is acceptable to simply moderate the conversation and allow the students to come to a consensus. As an advocate for these students, it is important to close all lines of communication to ensure there is follow through with the decisions made by the council.

In the future, I plan to use student advocacy groups to give students a voice in the decision-making process at the school. If students are able to see that they have an impact on what happens in their school, they are more likely to take ownership and therefore, a strong school community will be built. When groups like these are formed, the decision-making process often becomes easier and it has lasting impact on your school community.

Apr 28

Standard 6: School Board Meeting

School Board Meeting Agenda 4-6-16

I attended the controversial school board meeting held on April 6, 2016. The most intriguing discussion/debate was in regards to the renaming of Godwin Middle School. The neutral stance of school leaders was the most note-worthy. When discussing the controversial topic, school leaders provided clear, concise details for the reasoning behind the renaming. Additionally, the school board approved several events and projects for next year’s calendar.

Throughout the school board meeting, I noted that although opinions varied on the renaming of the middle school, school leaders provided valid reasoning behind their decision-making and involved many stakeholders in the process. At the conclusion of the debate, school leaders acknowledged that all opinions were taken into consideration, but the board would make a decision based on what was best for the school division. Since I have never attended a school board meeting prior to this experience, it was rewarding to see how the meeting was facilitated and what roles everyone plays in the process.

Since I will be presenting for my school at the May 18th board meeting, I will use the skills learned from this experience to be well-prepared for my presentation and future experiences. Additionally, I will continue to fine-tune my facilitation skills in order to produce beneficial conversations to effectively accomplish a task.

 

Apr 28

Standard 4: Involving Parents in Student Learning

As a Principal’s Advisory Council (PAC) member, I actively participated with key stakeholders (administration, teachers, parents, community members, and students) in order to impact student learning. Over the course of the school year, I have participated in four PAC meetings. The outcome of these meetings has resulted in an increased awareness for students’ needs by collaborating with parents. As a collaborative team, we have developed effective budgeting practices by allocating funds to remediate at-risk students. Additionally, we have worked with parents to identify ways to support our children outside of school through extracurricular activities and events.

Through this rewarding experience, I’ve have gained several skills that will be essential to leading a school. After observing the administrators during these advisory meetings, I was able to see how the school leaders accept advisory from key stakeholders and additionally, guide the council’s way of thinking to meet the vision and needs of the school. These skills are essential to actively involving key stakeholders in decision-making, yet guiding them towards a decision that is best for you and your school.

In the future, I will use these acquired skills to facilitate a productive advisory council. I will continue to actively involve parents and families in their students’ learning by allowing them to participate in decision-making that impacts their child’s learning. When working with parents or families, it is imperative to see from the point of view of the parents and in turn, allow them to see your point of view. If both parties are able to see from the other party’s point of view then the decision-making process will be more negotiable and beneficial.

Feb 05

Standard 4: Improving visibility/communication with the community

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My Twitter

WMS Twitter

In order to improve visibility and communication with our school community, I wanted to receive the parents’ opinions on how this may be effectively accomplished. After of our meeting, we came to the conclusion that the use of social media would be the most effective way to communicate with our school community. Our school had previously established a Twitter account to post school announcements and although this was a good source of communication, it often reiterated what was posted on our school website. In order to improve our visibility and communicate our school vision, we wanted to post more pictures/videos to recognize our staff and students. Once we had the school Twitter account posting a more personal message, we wanted to encourage staff to develop their own accounts so their students’ family members could take a peak into their classrooms and get to know their child’s teachers better.

After several months, this source of communication has proved to be effective. Students, families, and community members are able to stay up to date on recent happenings at Woodbridge Middle School. As a school leader, this communication tool proves to be extremely effective because it showers the community with positivity and recognizes our accomplishments.

As a school leader, I believe this tool enables your school to be visible and projects a positive image of the school onto the members of the community. My goal in the near future is to expand the use of Twitter at our school, so the majority of our staff can contribute to our vision.

Nov 10

Standard 3: Participate in developing the school budget

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As a part of the Principal’s Advisory Council and intern, I worked with administrators and lead teachers to develop a balanced budget with minimal impact on student learning as our primary goal. As the administrative intern, I was given the duty of assessing the cost of supports (specific to technology) for student learning. Working with our technology coach, we identified the areas of need and the cost for repairs of current technology (laptops, smartboards, printers). Using the information collected, we determined which items were the highest and lowest priorities. Based on this assessment, we submitted our findings to administration for review. In our second meeting as a group, we addressed the concern of balancing our budget and provided suggestions for possible cuts.

Although this was a rewarding experience, it was difficult to manage several perspectives on what cuts need to made. Based on my observations, I believe administration could have collaborated more on their final decision, but ultimately, a decision needed to be made.

I believe the most valuable part of this experience was dealing with the dilemma of making budget cuts. When a situation like this occurs, it was noted that the school leader must look at the issue from all angles and perspectives. Although decisions may prove to be difficult, you must keep the impact on student learning your highest priority.

 

Oct 14

Standard 2: Staff Development Project

Gryff News 2Gryff News

Through my data analysis of our school’s SIP, I was able to identify the All-boys program as an area of improvement. Through my 5 years of experience as an All-boys teacher, I have seen many of our veteran teachers leave the All-boys program to seek other opportunities. Since the majority of our All-boys teachers have limited teaching experience, many of the All-boys strategies have dissipated. I believed the most effective method of improvement would be to develop a monthly newsletter to provide valuable All-boys education information on instructional strategies. This newsletter has given our new teachers a concrete document to refer to when seeking advice. Presently, administration and teachers are thoroughly enjoying the newsletter because it doesn’t just save valuable time by not meeting as a program, but it enables the program to work together as an unit.

Initially, I believed this project could be developed relatively quickly on a monthly basis, but I quickly learned that creating a monthly newsletter can be time-consuming. When developing the newsletter, I needed to do extensive research to provide the most valuable information to our teachers. Additionally, I wanted to use visuals and examples to help their understanding of the program.

After completing the newsletters, I’ve learned that effective communication with your staff is imperative in becoming a successful leader. Leaders can also save valuable time by creating concrete resources for the teachers to use.

Oct 13

Standard 1: SIP member

As Woodbridge Middle School’s SIP member, I was an active participant in setting and improving on our improvement targets. Periodically, throughout the Spring, Summer and Fall we would meet together as a committee and discuss our school’s data and report from the State. When analyzing the data, we compared our data/AMO’s to similar regional schools. Based upon the discrepancies found between the two sets of data, we were able to locate several improvement targets. At the beginning of this school year, we have put our action plan into place and begun monitoring our improvements.

Prior to becoming a SIP member, I was unaware school-based improvement projects existed. It was interesting to see the staff representatives and administration working together as a team to achieve a common goal. At our meetings, I was able to observe our administration taking on a more democratic role in their leadership. I believe our school leaders took this approach because they wanted the staff to own the improvement targets and become intrinsically motivated members.

As a prospective school leader, I wanted to observe how my administrators were able to bring a group of professionals together to work towards a common goal. As a school leader, it is imperative to have a democratic voice during these meetings and move your staff as a team through the SIP process.

Oct 13

Standard 2: Implement and Evaluate SIP

Prior to starting my internship experience, I was a participant in Woodbridge Middle School’s School Improvement Plan committee. After developing my own SIP, I have used my own data analysis to become a more active participant and offer varying improvement targets and proposals. While looking at our school’s SOL data, I have noted that our All-boys program is struggling in Math throughout 6th, 7th, and 8th grade. With this analysis, I have determined several strategies and action plans to help address the areas of need. I will continue to monitor this progress throughout the 2015-2016 school year.

Before starting this project, it appeared to be many hours of long and tedious work. Since I have developed this project from the beginning stages of data analysis, I have taken on this project as a personal goal and mission. Through this task I have learned that when someone is personally invested into a project, the desired goal is much more achievable due to intrinsic motivation.

I have learned through this process that a leader is able to move groups of people in a common direction when given the proper motivation. Although it was rather difficult to have other participants take part in my project, I learned many strategies to help designate tasks throughout the staff and therefore, play the part as project manager.

Oct 06

Standard 5: SPED Placement Meetings

Throughout the late summer and early fall, Elizabeth Vaughan Elementary conducted several special education placement meetings. My supervisor believed these meetings would be “controversial” and would be good experiences. During these meetings, I acted as an observer by watching how the administrators conducted the meeting and dealt with hostile parents. 

Through my observations, I learned that no matter how upset a parent or staff member gets, it is imperative to have the meeting focused on what is best for the student. Several times throughout the meetings, the staff would be focused on what was best for the school or the parent would be focused on what’s ideal for them. When this occurred, the administrator brought the focus back to the child, therefore the two parties could meet on common ground. 

The Special Education placement meetings are typically interesting due to varying views of each party. It is imperative to place the student in a place where he/she can succeed. Since this may require many support systems, it is important to keep in mind that this student will need to function in society. Therefore, these support systems should be working towards independence in the near future.