Domain I Reflection:
Essentially, Domain I indicates the importance of teamwork and collaboration for educational leaders and successful schools. Being willing, and able to work together to raise ideas, problem-solve and seek school-wide improvement is essential. Collaborative work has been a hallmark of my leadership experiences and it is evident that students (and teachers) benefit from this approach rather than individual isolated efforts. I believe this domain was listed first for a reason, because it is vital to the success of any educational leader.
Artifacts:
Collaborative Specialist Planning MeetingsAs the team leader for specialists, I represented a wide variety of subject area teachers. The team of 18 teaching art, music, PE, languages, science and more worked primarily in isolation for a majority of the unit planning. I decided to initiate collaborative planning meetings once a month where we could come together to review units that we were all working on across subjects within a grade level to collaborate on ideas, strategies, resources and teaching practices. We reviewed unit plans and provided feedback to better our practice and student learning. Attached is a meeting presentation that kept us focused and on track to meeting our goals. I organised the meetings, agendas and facilitated feedback protocols in these meetings.PYP Collaborations with Grade Level TeamsAs a specialist teacher, it can often be very difficult to find time (or for some, motivation) to keep up with the current and upcoming units in every grade that we teach, let alone support and collaborate within your discipline to really make a deep impact on student learning across subjects. At ASB we were fortunate to be given ample planning time and with other teacher leaders who were on board with collaboration and willing to be flexible with meeting times and put in the extra effort for the extra results in student learning, I really enjoyed the opportunities to meet regularly with grade level teams to collaborate on units- particularly PYP units of inquiry. I worked extensively each year with Grade 4 on their biome and media units, Grade 5's exhibition unit, Grade 2's very influential people unit and Grade 3's storytelling unit. Attached is a sample of the collaborative google doc that we used with the Grade 4 Media unit to map out lesson plans including resources, progress and goals for each week. We also met more frequently during this unit, 1-2 times per week formally with informal check ins on a nearly daily basis to ensure all of the teachers were on the same page and keeping the 3 sections of grade 4 students headed in the same direction. This kind of collaboration takes commitment from teachers and educational leaders to provide support in terms of planning time and freedom and flexibility in curriculum deadlines in order to maximize student learning. I also felt we benefited significantly as teachers in sharing best practices, reflecting on progress as a group and working together to roll out a well planned and developed unit together.
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Tree Ring Collaborative Yearbook CoordinatorWhen ASB built a second campus to house the elementary division of our school, many changes were made in the structure and organisation of school operations. One of the (many) changes was the decision to create its own separate yearbook as HS yearbook students would no longer have direct access to ES students for photos and stories. I "was volunteered" to be the Yearbook Coordinator for the ES due to my interest and talents in technology and developing a collaborative yearbook using a collaborative online program called TreeRing (which had already been tested and experimented with in Research and Development). I worked with the Director of R&D to develop a vision for a collaborative yearbook that would be created by teachers in the school initially with the long term vision of having students help run and direct the theme, images used and content included. My job in piloting the yearbook in its first year was to secure reps from the grade level teams and specialists and guide and mentor them through the year as they collected and created their pages, keeping us on track with a timeline and regularly checking in to help with the technology and progress of the book. At the end of last year I drafted a proposal to help the position carry on as I was leaving the school and hope that many of the structures I set in place continue to serve the school well for future yearbooks.
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