Urban Instructional Leadership Platform
As instructional leaders, we demand high-quality, student-centered, and culturally relevant instruction. We value distributive leadership, assessment accountability, and a culturally relevant curriculum. “Thoughtful teachers promote thoughtful students” (Glickman and Gordon, p.64). Through implementing Glickman and Gordon’s Developmental Supervision, instructional leaders can build a teacher's capacity to be “thoughtful” therefore impacting “thoughtful” students. When we practice being “thoughtful” our instruction meets the needs of all students regardless of race, economics, ability, gender, and further intersectionality.
Culturally Relevant Practices
For too many African American students, the school remains an alien and hostile place” (Ladson-Billings, 1995, p.161). Our students of color face many challenges in the schoolhouse from profiling to lack of representation. As instructional leaders, we must shift this narrative and ensure that our students of culture have what they need to be successful scholars. We use Ladson-Billing's three criteria of academic success, cultural competency, and critical consciousness to ensure equitable instruction.
During my practicum I observed student’s not having resources, teachers being pressured to teach to a test, teachers being forced to use district-mandated curricula and follow the pacing guides. This means we must adapt our instruction, curriculum, and resources to meet the needs of our students. Too often, our curriculums omit the every day and lived experiences of our students of color. For example, our curriculums often ask us to explore academic concepts in isolation. If we take those same standards and teach them through a culturally relevant lens, we begin to deliver equitable instruction and see all students achieve academic excellence.
Developing Educators
Distributive leadership takes on the African proverb mindset of “it takes a village to raise a child.” “Several evidence-based studies indicate that distributed leadership is the leadership idea for today’s school.” (Sol, 2021, p.74) To be successful, you must first acknowledge how power is shared. Power should be “normative” which means it extends beyond the individual and leadership team. Normative power allows all staff to have a chance to get involved. Secondly, power should be representational which allows for a variety of strategies to address school needs and demands. Distributive leadership enables schools to restructure and create new roles to address the challenges.
In practice, this looks like using teacher leaders to implement different programs and initiatives. Some districts have already begun to offer stipends and other incentives to encourage leadership. Currently, I serve as the Multi-Classroom Leader and Instructional Coach for grades K-2. This means I spend 30% of my day coaching. Another 30% of my day co-teaching or pulling small groups. The reason is, grade level data is also my data as their coach. Lastly, my final 30% is spent analyzing data with the other leaders. This is where NELP standard componet 4.3 comes into play as we utilize data to ensure a student-centered instructional approach.
Accountability
Administrators hold accountability for teachers, students, families, community stakeholders, and district leaders. As administrators, we must be ready to always defend best practices. We work to show excellence in our schools that extends beyond what can be measured in high stakes testing. In practice NELP Standard Componet 4.4 was apparent as we assessed the assessments. As a leadership team we decided which assessments to monitor and how to respond to the data. We are utilizing NWEA data to track student growth and mastery. As students complete the assessment they are then group into intervention groups targeting those skills. As leaders we believe that grouping should be fluid therefore, we are intentional about ongoing progress monitoring.
During weekly PLC's teachers are asked to bring classroom data i.e. exit tickets and class assessments. We use this data to confirm and modify the NWEA groupings as well. We know that no one test is truly equitable therefore, we try to ensure we have multiple forms of assessments either formal or informal to determine grouping.