STANDARD FOUR: Human Resource Leadership
Principals will ensure that the school is a professional learning community. Principals will ensure that process and systems are in place which results in recruitment, induction, support, evaluation, development and retention of high performing staff. The principal must engage and empower accomplished teachers in a distributive manner, including support of teachers in day-to-day decisions such as discipline, communication with parents/guardians, and protecting teachers from duties that interfere with teaching, and must practice fair and consistent evaluations of teachers. The principal must engage teachers and other professional staff in conversations to plan their career paths and support district succession planning.
Element 4a. Professional Development/Learning Communities
School leaders are responsible for ensuring that the school is a professional learning community to promote collaboration, prevent isolation, and collectively improve instructional school practices. While a science teacher at Hawley Middle School, I was a strong supporter and participant in professional learning communities (PLCs) at the school and district levels. PLCs are difficult to maintain at the high school level compared to the middle school level because teachers often are singletons (e.g. only one Spanish teacher in the school) and/or do not have common planning times for meeting. Despite these barriers, as a principal resident I promoted the use of PLCs to share resources and strategies, even if conducted virtually. For example, I encouraged the science teachers to share assignments, instructional strategies, and even work together with student discipline (by providing time out or alternative learning settings for students if needed).
Personally, I am participating in several monthly PLCs to further my own professional learning:
Personally, I am participating in several monthly PLCs to further my own professional learning:
- JF Webb High School PLC on Differentiation and Collective Efficacy
- New Assistant Principals North Carolina Educator Evaluation System (NCEES)
- Granville County Public Schools Technology Leaders
- Granville County Public Schools Webmasters
- Promoting and supporting PLCs leads to teachers and other educational professionals to work collaboratively to identify and solve problems more efficiently than working in isolation.
- Working in PLCs results in all members increasing their knowledge and skill base leading to overall improvement in the school and district.
- Functional PLCs creates mechanisms for ongoing feedback and support resulting in continuous growth and improvement.
Element 4b. Recruiting, Hiring, Placing, and Mentoring of Staff
Recruiting, hiring, and mentoring high quality staff is an essential role for principals and other school leaders. I have been able to participate in the hiring process both as a teacher and as a principal resident. Additionally, NCSU Principal Fellows took a comprehensive Organization Human Resources Management course (ELP553) with Dr. Gregory Hicks. Through his class, assignments, and helping interview and hire multiple new teachers, and mentoring staff, I have gain valuable experiences in human resource leadership. I created two human resources documents: 1) Human Resources Plan for JF Webb High School (below left) and 2) Human Resources Best Practices (below right).
IMPACT:
IMPACT:
- Combining the NCSU Human Resources course while participating in the hiring process helped me to become more effective at interviewing and selecting quality staff.
- I feel more confident in being able to assess candidates for their strengths and weaknesses and to determine which candidates are the best fit for Webb High School.
- I am also more confident in determining the needs of new and existing staff to be able to help them with professional development, certifications, and other training to help staff to fit in an grow as employees.
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Element 4c. Teacher and Staff Evaluations
School principals and other administrators must evaluate teachers and staff in a fair, consistent, and equitable manner with a focus on improvement and overall goal of student achievement. One of my first tasks as principal resident was to create a digital classroom observation walkthrough tool. I created a walkthrough Google Form that incorporated district and school expectations for use of performance-based objectives, gradual release of information, and student engagement. I tried to make the form easy to use with dropdown menus and simple choices to make the form easy to use in a brief walkthrough observation, but with areas for providing substantive teacher feedback. Upon submission, I designed the walkthrough form to automatically generate and email a observation feedback document to both the teacher and administration observer and file it in a shared Google folder. My walkthrough form was so useful to both administrators and teachers that it was adopted by the other high schools for part of the Fall semester until the district adopted a more extensive observation tool.
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As a principal resident, I conducted more than 75 classroom walkthroughs and 20 formal observations of teachers and counselors using the North Carolina Educator Evaluations System (NCEES). Creating walkthrough tools, using district and state observation tools, and conducting different types of observations and providing staff feedback has helped me into a better observer and more adept at providing feedback to improve staff performance and subsequent student achievement.
IMPACT:
- Conducting so many walkthroughs helps me to quickly determine which teachers and instructional practices are most effective and to share my observations to help improve teachers and instruction.
- Practice conducting classroom walkthroughs and staff observations has helped me better identify strengths and areas for improvement allowing me to better improve teachers, instruction, and student learning.
- I also have become more adept at sharing feedback with teachers so that teachers see me as an ally helping them grow, and not as an evaluator.
- Digital methods for observation and feedback can easily be shared and adapted to others needs whether it is a teacher observing students, teachers observing each other, or administrators observing teachers.