Curriculum Leadership Institute

Pathways to School Improvement

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Starting the Year Off Right

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As we approach the start of another school year, there are many staff members who play a role in the success of the school. A CLI Model district has designated leadership teams with specific roles.  The Curriculum Coordinating Council (CCC) is responsible for making academic recommendations for the district, while Subject Area Committees (SACs) are grade level and/or course representatives designing curriculum, instructional plans, and assessments for a content area.  Please review the revised checklist to ensure all groups are aware and involved in the process. (Feel free to make your own working copy of this Google Doc checklist, or download the PDF form.) In addition, here are five simple things to think about when starting a new school year:

photo from Unsplash.com by Glenn Carstens-Peters
  1. New job, position, or responsibility. Keep in mind that you don’t need to know everything. You DO need to be resourceful and willing to find out the answers.
  2. Shared Calendar. Use the Google Calendar to schedule important meetings dates. Select the option that allows you to receive a reminder message. This can be helpful when meetings are determined weeks in advance and when you have several meetings to organize throughout the year.
  3. Review and provide support for ESSA requirements. This is the first year for the implementation of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA).  Make sure to research the requirements for your state, outline the expectations required by your district, and determine where you need to focus your energies to support the changes.
  4. Setting goals. Identify areas that you would like to improve upon and set some goals for the year. If you are an administrator, it might be beneficial to meet with your teachers individually to provide assistance in goal setting.  That doesn’t mean you set goals for them but help them identify their strengths, create realistic goals, and discuss how they can achieve their goals using their strengths.
  5. Talk less, listen more. Vicki Williams, a senior vice-president for NBC Universal, stated, “Leaders who do not listen will find they have people with nothing to say.” If you are facilitating a meeting and state your opinion before others have a chance to weigh in, this may influence how the team chooses to proceed. If you are afraid you will forget your point, write it down and continue to wait.  Your silence may allow an even better idea to emerge from the group or you actually might think of something else to add, too! Facilitators who allow the participants to speak a majority of the time are more likely to have supported group decisions.

Curriculum Coordinating Council (CCC) Checklist

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Subject Area Committees (SAC) Checklist

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Teacher Checklist

District Office and Building Principal Checklist

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The Excitement and Challenge of Beginning a New School Year

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A year ago at this important time of the school year, we published an E-Hint including checklists for starting the school year with immediate curriculum, instruction, and assessment needs at the forefront.  This E-Hint is still relevant for kick-starting these efforts for the new year: Checklists to Begin the School Year.

Reviewing the status of ongoing initiatives and planning for the current year should become routine.  In the years following the development of curriculum documents, the implementation of curriculum, and the writing of assessments, there are often other initiatives that must come into play to further improve student learning.  While we at Curriculum Leadership Institute (CLI), caution school districts about starting too many initiatives at once, there is a time and place where outside support for improving instructional strategies, improving the implementation of a new resource, using data analysis strategies to effectively critique our efforts, or other needs must be addressed.

With the beginning of a new school year on the horizon, evaluate decisions about when to start new initiatives, who will be affected by the change, and the intended result.  While examining time-allocation for any new initiative, planners should consider the impact on the staff.  Administrators must be very careful to ensure a plan that does not overload any particular staff member, or group of staff members, to the point of limiting their effectiveness in the classroom.  Teachers will continue to have all of the responsibilities of everyday management of the classroom. When the district starts something new, it necessarily impacts and potentially increases the amount of time needed for managing the classroom. Whether the new initiative requires study time, learning a new instructional strategy, finding better methods of accomplishing the same teacher tasks, learning new software programs, or implementing a new schoolwide effort, teachers must continue to do all that they have been doing in addition to anything new. Providing time for teachers to learn, discuss, and evaluate effectiveness of new strategies is critical to ensure fidelity to the effort.  When that time is provided, it makes all the difference.  The new initiative needs to be added to the checklist of the ongoing tasks, in detail, so that the potential impact on staff members is clear to all involved.

A visual display, such as a spreadsheet that can be color coded or sorted by various attributes such as teachers, time of year, related efforts, etc., helps planners “see” when the same teachers are impacted repeatedly in a short time span.  Visuals help call attention to “pink flag cases” where instruction may be so significantly impacted that the benefit of the work or training time becomes questionable.  In order to make the visual display most helpful, include the type of training, the teachers impacted, other efforts that are closely related to each training or work session, and the recommended time of the school year for the training.  Then, with planning and discussion, the dates can be scheduled to the best advantage of all staff and the potential negative effects of doing too much at any one given time are greatly reduced.  The resulting professional development calendar is designed including these dates, bene-fitting both the staff involved and student learning.

For the best start possible, it is important that ALL initiatives are evaluated in terms of time required and impact on the school or district as a whole. Adjustments to schedules and assignments are made to maximize the many necessary efforts needed, allowing teachers to grow in their ability to assist student learning, while managing all of those efforts and responsibilities that do not change with a new year.

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