The site-based decision-making team for West Brook Senior High School has a plan to move the campus forward and become an exemplary campus by the end of this school year. After a conversation with West Brook parent Sheryl Roedahl and Principal Bill Daniels I believe that the West Brook team is a great example of a site-based decision-making team. The group holds about 4 meetings a year. Daniels believes that the number of meetings they have “allows our team to stay focused on the task at hand, improving the level of student achievement on our campus.” Roedahl echoed that sentiment by saying, “Our team meets regularly because we owe it to the students to remain on track and we don’t believe we can do that if we meet less.” Expecting that the campus staff and employees would take a leading role, I was most surprised by Roedahl’s statement that described the first meeting she attended. “I was welcomed into the group and I was one of the first ones to speak, in fact, Mr. Daniels asked me what I thought the level of education that my child was receiving,” Roedahl said. I believe that West Brook’s decision team is just what it was designed to be, a guiding force for the good of student learning and campus improvement.
The very first thing that I would do on my action plan would be to form a Professional Learning Community among the 9th grade Math teachers. I would also form a Math focused PLC at each grade level. On occasion I would have all the PLCs meet together to share the ideas on which they have been working. I think that getting the grade level Math teachers together, focused on the same goal while also providing a support group will have a tremendous impact.
To ensure continuous improvement I will involve as many different stakeholders as I can in as many ways as possible. I will not try to convince all stakeholders at once that what we are doing will work. Instead I will approach each group separately, get that group fully engaged, and then use that success to motivate the next. This will slowly create buy-in from the stakeholders. I will continually build on this pattern as we implement all of the steps and activities from the action plan.
Reflection
The site-based decision-making team for West Brook Senior High School has a plan to move the campus forward and become an exemplary campus by the end of this school year. After a conversation with West Brook parent Sheryl Roedahl and Principal Bill Daniels I believe that the West Brook team is a great example of a site-based decision-making team. The group holds about 4 meetings a year. Daniels believes that the number of meetings they have “allows our team to stay focused on the task at hand, improving the level of student achievement on our campus.” Roedahl echoed that sentiment by saying, “Our team meets regularly because we owe it to the students to remain on track and we don’t believe we can do that if we meet less.” Expecting that the campus staff and employees would take a leading role, I was most surprised by Roedahl’s statement that described the first meeting she attended. “I was welcomed into the group and I was one of the first ones to speak, in fact, Mr. Daniels asked me what I thought the level of education that my child was receiving,” Roedahl said. I believe that West Brook’s decision team is just what it was designed to be, a guiding force for the good of student learning and campus improvement.The very first thing that I would do on my action plan would be to form a Professional Learning Community among the 9th grade Math teachers. I would also form a Math focused PLC at each grade level. On occasion I would have all the PLCs meet together to share the ideas on which they have been working. I think that getting the grade level Math teachers together, focused on the same goal while also providing a support group will have a tremendous impact.
To ensure continuous improvement I will involve as many different stakeholders as I can in as many ways as possible. I will not try to convince all stakeholders at once that what we are doing will work. Instead I will approach each group separately, get that group fully engaged, and then use that success to motivate the next. This will slowly create buy-in from the stakeholders. I will continually build on this pattern as we implement all of the steps and activities from the action plan.