Promoting distributed leadership across a school campus.
As an administrator, you may be charged with identifying and coaching other school leaders to promote distributed leadership across a school campus.
Allocate at least 4 hours in the field to support this field experience.
For this benchmark assignment, you will continue in the role of the school principal who is developing an instructional leader. Complete a coaching cycle of pre-conferencing, observing, and post-conferencing with a novice instructional leader who is completing the coaching cycle with a classroom teacher. Begin by meeting with the instructional leader and the classroom teacher for a pre-conference, then attend the observation, and follow-up with a post-conference. During each step of the process, evaluate the novice instructional leader on the quality of their feedback, specifically related to school culture and professional respect.
Use any remaining field experience hours to assist the principal mentor and, provided permission, seek opportunities to observe and/or assist the principal mentor.
At the conclusion of the clinical field experience, compose a 750-1,000 word summary and analysis of your experiences.
Include the following:
Summarize your coaching experiences, demonstrating how you developed and supervised the staff’s instructional and leadership capacity.
Describe how developing leaders within the school helps focus organizational time on high-quality school instruction and student learning.
Explain the school’s distributed leadership structure and provide 1-3 recommendations to improve the structure or related policies.
Sample Solution
My clinical field experience focused on coaching a novice instructional leader who was completing the coaching cycle with a classroom teacher. The first step was to meet with the instructional leader and the classroom teacher for a pre-conference. This included discussing expectations and determining how to provide useful feedback during the observation as well as ensuring that both parties felt comfortable with participating in this process.
During this pre-conference, I evaluated the novice instructional leader’s ability to provide thoughtful comments related to school culture and professional respect while also demonstrating an understanding of best practices for providing effective feedback.
The next step was attending the observation itself, which allowed me to further evaluate the novice instructional leader’s ability to make meaningful observations about class instruction, student learning, and other aspects of teaching practice. We discussed strategies for providing timely, actionable feedback that would be helpful both during and after the lesson had concluded. Afterwords, we held a post-conference wherein we reviewed our observations from earlier in order discuss areas where improvement could be made or successes celebrated.
Developing leaders within a school setting helps focus organizational time on high-quality school instruction and student learning by creating a pipeline of qualified personnel ready to take on more challenging roles such as principal or vice principal when needed. Having multiple people who are trained in proper leadership techniques allows districts greater flexibility when it comes time for hiring new staff members or if there is turnover due unexpected circumstances like retirement or relocation of current employees. Additionally, having designated leaders at each grade level can help create continuity between grades for students transitioning from one level up into another without having them encounter sudden changes in teaching style or educational philosophy between levels due different mentors training their replacements each year.
In my experience working within this school district's distributed leadership structure I found it beneficial but not without its flaws; while there are various layers of support throughout every grade level allowing teachers access highly qualified coaches around necessary topics such as technology integration or behavior management however these same layers can lead occasionally lead indecision when it comes down decision making authority ultimately being delegated out higher than expected until all options have been explored leading to delays in progress being made on various initiatives within schools due factoring in too many opinions rather than trusting teams closer ground floor0 . In order improve this structure I recommend paying attentionto how much responsibility over any given project is delegated outand clearly establish who holds overarching authority at beginningof project so that any roadblocks can circumvented quicker furtherdown line if needbe . Furthermore encouraging collaborationwithin teams so that decisions aren't siloed ownershipover projects is shared amongst all involved helping ensure bettercommunications flow up down across vertical axis . Lastly takingtime review successes failures team effort ensure maximum efficiency realized going forward .