Educational Leadership Instructional Strategy

Abstract
Uplift Triumph Preparatory is a public charter school in Dallas, Texas. Since 2013, Uplift Education has offered students at all grade levels the opportunity for personal, moral, and academic achievement. Although Uplift celebrates its successes in creating the type of supportive environment required for educational achievement, strong leaders understand the need to strategically plan for change and continually update goals. This Instructional Leadership Plan outlines the vision for Uplift Triumph Preparatory School, the K-5 segment of the Uplift Education group of charter schools. In this report are included an outline of the leadership team and its contributions to creating a purposeful community, a selection of three core goals that constitute the right work for our school, the ideal programs and practices to facilitate meeting goals, and how to overcome barriers to change.
Vision Statement
The Uplift Triumph Preparatory School vision is multifaceted, addressing both learning outcomes and the environment in which learning takes place. Learning outcomes are focused on the promotion of qualities that will allow students to evolve into competent scholars and members of their community. In particular, “all scholars are encouraged to strengthen their critical thinking, communication, and leadership skills,” (“About Uplift Triumph Preparatory,” 2018, p. 1). Thus, the vision is to cultivate a class of future scholars who think critically, communicate effectively, and promote social justice through their actions, words, and deeds. The vision for the learning environment is to create “a joyful, supportive place to grow and learn,” (“About Uplift Triumph Preparatory,” 2018, p. 1). The emphasis on joy and support shows how educators and other faculty members can approach their own role in the purposeful community created on campus.
Leadership Team: A Purposeful Community
Creating a leadership team is an evidence-based process, not an arbitrary one (“A Plan for Effective School Leadership,” n.d.). Moreover, creating a leadership team diffuses responsibility and removes the pressure to find a single unicorn-like leader who fulfills all the qualities associated with effective educational leadership (“A Plan for Effective School Leadership,” n.d.). The theory of shared leadership combines elements of visionary, transformational, and democratic leadership and helps Uplift Triumph create a purposeful community. A purposeful community has collective efficacy: the knowledge and belief that together, the team can achieve its goals (“A Plan for Effective School Leadership,” n.d.). Of course, collective efficacy also requires that all team members share the same goals and vision. The effectiveness of the leadership team also requires that members pay attention to available assets and understand how to leverage them according to guiding principles and foundational ideals. Finally, the vision, values, and goals of the community may change over time, or as the demographics or normative climate changes. The community needs to continually meet to share concerns and to create consensus with agreed-upon goals and processes to meet those goals (“A Plan for Effective School Leadership,” n.d.). The following is an outline of how a purposeful community can be created at Uplift Triumph.
Operating Principles
The operating principles of the leadership team include collective efficacy and personal accountability. Instructional leadership supports “the degree to which teachers work together to improve instruction, and together leadership and teacher collaboration may contribute to school effectiveness by strengthening collective efficacy beliefs,” (Goddard & Goddard, 2015, p. 1). Therefore, the leadership techniques and strategies need to create the type of empowering, collaborative environment that fosters collective efficacy and personal accountability. The operating principles of a purposeful community in education are based on constructivist ideology, which has been empirically linked to improved student achievement outcomes (Huffman, Hipp & Pankake, et al, 2001).
Leveraging Available Assets
Assets include not only tangible but also intangible assets like the normative culture, shared vision, and values. In a team environment, each individual can participate in resource development and allocation, allowing the entire school to leverage available assets and focus on strengths rather than weaknesses.
Mutual Goals
Creating mutual goals often depends on actively collaborating with team members, sharing concerns and offering suggestions for change. The School Snapshot survey yields several mutual goals that can be focused on during periods of self-assessment, including how to best structure and deliver curricular content, how to employ evidence-based classroom management strategies, and how to create an ideal professional culture.
Processes and Norms
Members of the team must also agree upon the processes used to fulfill goals. Those processes are grounded in shared ethics and values, which also inform the normative culture of Uplift Triumph. The school’s leadership team agrees on conflict resolution strategies, methods of discipline for both students and faculty, and the protocols for mitigating crises. Similarly, the leadership team decides on who takes responsibility for communicating with members of the community, community organizations, and members of the school board. Some of the norms that the leadership team promotes include a supportive and cooperative environment in which all voices are heard. Creating a normative culture in the school also helps the leadership team create a communication strategy that best reflects the spirit and vision of Uplift Triumph. A collective leadership team speaks with one voice.
Distribution of Responsibilities
One of the reasons why a shared leadership model is effective is that responsibility is distributed and shared. Each person offers particular strengths they can contribute, which is why a diverse team enables the expression of multiple leadership qualities. For example, some members of the community will be more adept at financial and budgetary work, whereas others will be better in a communications position.
Selecting the Right Work
The School Snapshot Survey reveals several focal points for the leadership team. Of the goals identified, three emerge as the most salient.
Goal 1: Opportunities for Parental and Community Involvement
Parental involvement is a cornerstone of student academic achievement (Castro, Exposito-Casas, Lopez-Martin, et al, 2015). Community involvement has been shown to have a tremendous effect on the development, implementation, and efficacy of school-based health initiatives including dietary and physical activity programs (Kehm, Davey & Nanney, 2015). While Uplift Triumph has worked hard to build bridges with community organizations and with parents, focusing on this goal now will help to strengthen those relationships and build new strategic alliances.
Goal 2: Creating a Safe and Orderly Environment
This goal is actually linked with community involvement, showing how mutual goals are linked under common rubrics of shared values. Creating a safe and orderly environment at the school begins with community safety and safety awareness, which can involve partnerships with parents and law enforcement. At the school, faculty is directly responsible for creating a safe and orderly environment through effective classroom management strategies and improvements to the interior design of hallways, rooms, and other interior and exterior spaces. Not only is safety a normative goal in its own right, but it is also a means to the end goal of improving student social and academic achievement (Osher, Kidron, DeCandia, et al, 2016).
Goal 3: Formal Recognition of Student Progress
Formal recognition of student progress pays tribute to the principles of behaviorism, offering rewards to students who exceed expectations. A formal recognition system also helps improve intrinsic motivation for all students to push beyond their self-imposed limits and reach their goals with the help of teachers. However, the formal recognition program needs to be structured in ways that avoid arbitrary rewards, favoritism, and bias. Technology can be effectively leveraged as one of the school’s core assets used to meeting this goal. For example, open badges are one way to formally recognize diverse learning skills and knowledge, while also offering teachers the opportunity to practice “alternative forms of assessment” of student achievement (Jovanovic & Devedzic, 2014, p. 115). With digital badges, the formal recognition parameters are also clearly identifiable and verifiable, preventing some of the problems that might arise with bias.
Instructional Programs
Uplift Triumph should focus on an instructional program fostering student leadership because it would best reflect the overarching goals of the institution. Fostering student leadership is an essential feature of college preparatory education and has been empirically linked with improving student motivation to succeed, and to develop improved social and communication skills too (Rosch, Collier & Thompson, 2015). Student leadership development requires both informal and formal supports. Informal supports include changing the ways teachers identify and foster leadership skills and communicate with students, while formal supports include actual leadership training programs and activities.
The leadership team plays an active role in creating and implementing the curriculum needed for reaching this and ancillary goals. For example, the leadership team collaborates on specific ways educators can incorporate team building skills into their classroom design and instructional strategies. Based on the educational literature, the leadership team can also offer suggestions for how to guide curricular content and incorporate new material that might help students approach content from different angles. The team can also use formal assessment methods using both qualitative and quantitative methods, including comparing year to year performance and also surveying teachers.
Working with the community and parents, the leadership team and educators can also implement leadership building opportunities for students. These opportunities align with the overall mission and vision of Uplift Triumph, in preparing students to think critically and be actively engaged with their community. Whether public speaking opportunities, athletic skills development, or work in drama, arts, or sciences, students can explore the options available to them and play a more active role in their own educational achievement.
Institutional Best Practices
Best practices to support the emergence of student leaders, while remaining faithful to the mission, values, and visions of Uplift Triumph, include optimal curriculum development. As Glatthorn, Jailall & Jailall (2016) point out, principals shape school culture and norms as well as what is actually being taught when they serve in the role of curriculum leader. The leadership team creates schedules and objectives, and helps empower educators to meet those objectives. Strong rationales and reasoning helps to underscore the importance of each goal or strategy. When leadership is shared among a team, as with Uplift Triumph, institutional best practices are collectively developed. Those practices will be constrained by state and federal laws, but can also reflect the school’s mission and vision (Glatthorn, Jailall & Jailall, 2016). Some of the specific instructional strategies and practices that would be conducive to leadership development include creating student workgroups, implementing technology strategically, and having a formal peer mentoring and support group system.
Leading and Sustaining Change
Levels of Change
First order changes are those that are “perceived as an extension of the past,” whereas second order changes are perceived as more radical breaks from traditions (“A Plan for Effective School Leadership,” n.d., p. 113). The goals and strategies outlined in this instructional leadership plan are first order changes, which can flow organically from the pre-existing normative culture in Uplift Triumph. Existing paradigms have been working well to foster leadership development among both faculty and students, and the leadership team is collectively committed to engaging the community and parents to offer feedback and participate in the decision-making process. Furthermore, the goals do not clash with existing visions and values. Consistent with existing knowledge of best practices, the proposed changes are more an enhancement to existing procedures than they are radical reforms. Therefore, implementing changes will be less problematic than it would be if the school were trying to operationalize a second-order change.
Overcoming Barriers
Resistance to change is inevitable, particularly when working within a leadership team and a purposeful community. Some of the signs of resistance include passive-aggressive behaviors like not showing up for meetings, or direct conflict that manifests as verbal attacks or meaningful silence. Any resistance to change can be mitigated via the promotion of compassion, collegiality, and professionalism. All members of the team need to be encouraged to share their opinions and voice dissent, raising concerns and being challenged to support their contentions with evidence.
The normative culture at Uplift Triumph does stress the salience of harmony and respect. Dissention is welcome, and the process of active listening is formally entrenched via the leadership community. A thorough and clear implementation plan will also help clarify misunderstandings, and show each member of the team the specific steps that need to be taken to envision, plan, and reach goals on a day by day basis.
Sustaining Improvement: Leadership Practices
Sustaining the desired improvements depends on cultivating leadership skills and implementing best practices in the purposeful community. A set of measurable, reasonable, and reachable objectives will offer the means for honest self-assessment. Regular team meetings will ensure that the democratic principles of shared leadership can reach their full potential. Strategic ways to ensure the maintenance of new policies and curriculum changes include regular meetings with parents and community organizations, and to regularly reflect on the program and how it can be improved further in the future. With this instructional leadership strategy, Uplift Triumph can achieve its goals and promote its vision for childhood education.




References
“A Plan for Effective School Leadership,” (n.d.).
“About Uplift Triumph Preparatory,” (2018). https://www.uplifteducation.org/domain/3018
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