By developing non-
traditional teacher leader teams that work with
administrators to examine
student work and classroom practices and plan more effective instruction,
this district is making students its focus.
T
he school leadership teams are immersed in spirited discussions about what to write on their in- dividual sentence strips, which
they need to post at the back of the room in less than 10 minutes. The assignment reads: “You are in charge of writing the headline for a front-page story about your district that will appear in the local newspaper ex- actly three years from now.” This task is part of day eight of a leader-
ship development series, designed for prin- cipals with their school leadership teams, in the Beaumont Unified School District. As the teams post their sentence strips, we
see that many elementary schools’ headlines include an element about reading, such as, “All Students Exceed Reading Standards.” The high school team’s headline reads,
“Beaumont USD Hits All AYP Targets as Beaumont High Beats Banning, 25-0.” After friendly but lively debate, this group ulti- mately managed to include both student achievement and the rout of the rival team from the neighboring city’s high school in its headline.
22 Leadership After the headlines are shared amid
good-natured laughter, mixed groups of members from the various school teams set about writing a set of one-sentence collective commitments – in eight different categories, such as leadership, expectations and collab- oration – that will be required to make the headlines come true in three years or less. After a process of deleting duplicates,
combining and word-smithing, a set of dis- trict-level commitments emerges on the row of charts. During the break, each adminis- trator and teacher leader signs them. Digital photos are taken of the signed documents. The final commitments will be typed and sent out to each member.
Applying the new skills of leadership This collective building of the vision of
what is possible for Beaumont students is the result of having teachers and administrators participating in the leadership development sessions together over time. In such a pro-
By Maureen E. Latham and Terry Wilhelm
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40