Getting+to+Know+Your+School

toc =Introduction= //**Getting to Know Your School**// In any school environment, teachers, parents, and students look to the administrators to set the tone for the school. As an administrator, you need to be aware of all of the factors that influence the success of your school and your students’ performance. Goal-setting is an essential step when it comes to deciding what needs to happen to continue positive progress or arrest a decline. What data should an administrator gather and review when it comes time to develop goals that are measurable, relevant, achievable, and worthwhile?

Goals and objectives should be based on qualitative and quantitative data about your school. Has your school met AYP in all areas? Are you meeting the Annual Measureable Objectives for your subgroups? How do your students’ test scores compare to other schools in your district? How do the teachers, students, and caregivers feel about the quality of the school and the environment? What do you see as your role in facilitating change and creating an environment that fosters success for your students and your staff? What data will help you set your course?

In this course, you will be working as part of an administrative leadership team to make data driven decisions based on real school data. This week, you will form an administrative leadership team, and come to consensus on what school data to use. Youwill look at the demographics of the district, town, school. You will also review data about math and reading scores on standardized tests, look at data on AYP as a whole and in subgroups, and look at relevant information from school climate surveys.

=Checklist=

=Objectives= By the end of this week, you will:
 * 1) Develop your administrative leadership team and come to consensus on stakeholders that will be part of your team.
 * 2) Identify school data to use for your leadership team challenges.
 * 3) Identify what types of data can be used to develop appropriate goals.
 * 4) Review the Educational Leadership Constituency Council (ELCC) standards.

=Readings= This week’s readings provide an overview on the importance of consensus building as well as an introduction to data collection and analysis. __**Data Collection and Analysis**__ __**Consensus Building**__ Throughout the course, you will be working in teams to simulate the discussion and decision-making of administrative leadership teams in schools. Your team will need to consider viewpoints from people in various stakeholders who are a part of the learning community. To prepare for this experience, review the brief resources below: media type="custom" key="5562971" __**Standards**__ Review the following standards for educating administrators:
 * **Intersections: New routes open when one type of data crosses another (**Bernhardt**).** As an administrator, it's important to understand the value and benefit of data collection and analysis. Even a relatively simple analysis of school data can help teachers shape their practices more effectively. As you read, think about how you will collect school data, and what you will do with the information. Consider how the different measures and categories will provide deeper insight into understanding what the data means.
 * **Consensus Building Presentation**
 * **FM AM Listening: Hear the Full Story before you Respond**
 * **A Vote for Consensus**
 * **Consensus Decision Making**
 * [|**Maryland Instructional Leadership Framework**]
 * [|**Educational Leadership Constituency Council (ELCC)**]*
 * [|Interstate School Leaders Licensure Consortium's (ISLLC) Standards for School Leaders]

//*The ELCC standards will under-gird the final project in this course, and you will be expected to reference these.//

=Activities=

[[image:http://olms.cte.jhu.edu/olms/output/images/call_icon_4.gif caption="-"]]Get Creative!
Rather than a text-based response, feel free to post an online multimedia presentation, Animoto video, VoiceThread, podcast, or other creative format.

This week, you will complete an activity that will help your instructor get to know you and your goals for this course.

1. In the **Week 1: Introductions** whole group discussion forum, share a posting that describes: 2. Revisit the forum to review the postings of your classmates. Hopefully, this will provide an opportunity to learn something new about each other, including your new leadership team. Feel free to respond to contribute to the informal discussion.
 * //What you do and what challenges you the most about your job//
 * //Your goals for yourself as a leader//
 * //Something you hope to learn as a result of this course//
 * //Your response to the question, “What is the role of a school administrator?”//

[[image:http://olms.cte.jhu.edu/olms/output/images/call_icon_9.gif caption="-"]]
Early in the week, decide who will be this week's Facilitator. It may be as simple as the first person who enters the team forum. This person should begin the team's discussions.

Resources
Sample Rotation for Administrative Leadership Team Roles

[|Leadership Team Activities]

For this course, your team will act as an administrative leadership team to make data-driven decisions to improve a school. You will identify roles (stakeholders) that will be part of your leadership team. A school leadership team consists of many different stakeholders, representing many different perspectives. You will need to decide what stakeholders should participate on your team. For example, you may choose to have an administrator, teacher, parent, and technology coordinator on your team.

Individually, informally interview the principal at your school, and find out the members of your school's leadership team. When you interview your principal, consider the following when asking questions: Try to complete this interview as early in the week as possible so that you can share with your team the results of your interview. Also, be sure that you read this week's readings and listen to the introductory podcast before deliving too much into the activities. Think about the different members of the school community that should be involved in school planning and decision-making. As you engage in dialogue as part of your administrative leadership team, it is important that you consider the perspectives of these stakeholders, as well as the results of your interview with your school principal.
 * Note**: Although we will be deviating from the normal roles used in previous courses, there should still be a Facilitator and Reporter each week. Typically, Facilitators will start the team's weekly thread and guide the discussions, and the Reporter will post final remarks (solutions to weekly team challenge). How you align roles to leadership roles is up to your team to determine.
 * Directions**
 * Part I (Individual)**
 * //Who is on the school's leadership team?//
 * //How were the appropriate stakeholders identified?//
 * //How were specific inidividuals selected to participate on the leadership team?//
 * //How frequently does the leadership team meet?//
 * //How integral are they in the planning and decision making processes of the school//?
 * //What role(s) does each member play in planning and/or decision making?//
 * Part II (Team) Identify Leadership Team Members**
 * 1) This week's Facilitator (or first person to visit the forum) should create a new thread titled, **Week 1: Leadership Team Members.**
 * 2) In that forum, individually, briefly summarize your intervivew with your school's principal. Share any relevant information about your school's leadership team.
 * 3) Engage in a discussion with your teammates about the various members of an administrative leadership team.
 * 4) Come to a consensus about the members of the school community that should be represented on your administrative leadership team. //**Note:** As you continue through the course, you may choose to alter the makeup of your school leadership team. You will have the opportunity to make changes and provide a rationale.//
 * 5) The Facilitator should set up a Google Doc, and complete an Administrative Leadership Team form that shows the various stakeholders and how you will be rotating roles weekly (see sample on right). Rotating roles will provide all team members with the opportunity to solve weekly challenges from different perspectives. **Suggestion**: select one stakeholder role each week to also serve as the weekly Facilitator so that role is rotated as well.
 * 6) The Reporter should share the team's Google Doc with the Instructor and Instructor Supports, and/or post the public URL in a clearly labeled team thread.
 * Note**: In addition to building a leadership team, you will also concurrently need to identify a school and relevant data that you will use for your weeky team challenges. See the //**Selecting a School Team Activity**// below.

Select Your School (Team)
|| Reference ||
 * ~  ||~ Type ||
 * ====[[image:http://olms.cte.jhu.edu/olms/output/images/default_lo_icon.gif caption="-"]][|School Information and Data]====

As you develop your leadership team and identify appropriate stakeholders that will be part of your team, you will also need to come to consensus on the school and associated school data you will use in your weekly team challenges throughout this course. It is expected that everyone in this course will obtain the appropriate school data from their school and share that data with the rest of the team.* Your administrative leadershiop team will then need to collaboratively work together to come to consensus on the best school data to use. //Only one school can be selected.// (1) This week's Facilitator should begin a new thread titled, **Week 1: School Data**. (2) Use this thread to individually share your school's data. Include in your post a brief overview of your school's climate. **//Important notes://** (3) Peruse the other data of the other schools posted by your teammates. (4) Work collaboratively to come to consensus on what school and data to use. (5) By the end of the week, in a clearly labeled thread (change the subject line), the Reporter should announce the school selected. (6) The person who's school was chosen, should place all files and school data in your team's **Resource** folder, so that it is easily accesssible to your all teammates and your instructor. As best you can, organize the information in the folder, in a coherent way. Other members of the team should assist with this task.
 * Directions**
 * //For any private data, please take out identifers or change to fictitious names.//
 * //Please consolidate your school's data into one file or link to a public URL. Multiple files with varying data should be compressed into a .zip file.//

After your team has chosen a school's data to use, individually, begin to analyze and evaluate demographic and standarized test performance data of your school, and note any trends. The information you identify from this analysis will be an important tool for goal-setting, for next week's team challenge.

*It is understood that a few people who either don't work in a school, or work for an independent school may have trouble with obtaining data, and they have been placed on a team where others have access to data.

Administrative Action Plan (Individual)
|| Reference ||
 * ~  ||~ Type ||
 * ====[[image:http://olms.cte.jhu.edu/olms/output/images/default_lo_icon.gif caption="-"]][|Administrative Action Plan Directions]====
 * [[image:http://olms.cte.jhu.edu/olms/output/images/icon_doc.gif caption="-"]]====[|Administrative Action Plan Rubric]==== || document ||

Throughout this course, you will simulate an administrative leadership team and make data-driven decisions, and then individually rationalize those decisions using available research articles.

Each week with your team, you will engage in practical decision-making strategies that are similar to the types of leadership planning that you will encounter as a school principal. Individually, you will review current research, and then connect research and practice to an Administrative Action Plan that you will work on developing each week, beginning in Week 3. In Weeks 3-7 you will develop discrete components of this plan and submit them for feedback to your instructor. At the end of the course, you will combine and revise these components to finalize your plan.
 * 1) Carefully read the **Administrative Action Plan** assignment directions and accompanying rubric. Note, you will not formally begin working on this assignment until Week 3.