President’s Perspective - Scott Spainhour

PRESIDENT’S Distributed Leadership - Another Look

While effective principals are driven to strengthen distributed leadership within their schools, to make it a common practice of their school culture, and to open doors for teachers to use their strengths for the good of the group, are we modeling such strategies at the district level as well? What are the communication and collaboration strategies used at the district level to reach educators across the district?

Scott Spainhour AAEA Board President Superintendent Greenbrier School District

Throughout the summer of 2018, I reflected on the high expectations and endless dedication of our Greenbrier educators and began brainstorming how to bring a select group of staff members together on a regular basis to make sure our work for students was effective yet as efficient as possible. Somewhat mimicking the make-up of a school leadership team, we began sketching out a plan for teachers representing a wide variety of grade levels, content areas, and departments, to join building and district leaders on a regular basis, to simply “work on the work” of improving our systems. The Greenbrier School District Task Force on Effectiveness and Efficiency was soon born and had its inaugural meeting in August 2018. I shared the goals of this task force with the newly formed team:

To increase cohesiveness and collaboration district wide To improve efficiency in the use of our educators’ time and resources To streamline the most impactful processes and systems that have led to student success across the district

Administrator March 2020 The first meeting of each fall semester gives our Task Force an opportunity to determine the focus areas for the next several months. These discussions are filtered through two criteria:

1. 2.

What pieces of our work make the biggest impact on our students? What pieces of our work (that have an impact on students) take the most time and energy of our educators?

In 2018-2019, the monthly collaboration of our District Task Force members led to many improvements to our student support systems. Assessment was a large focus area. The Task Force revised our administration of the Measures of Academic Progress as well as ACT Aspire Classroom Assessments. These changes protected more instructional time and gave teacher teams more choice in how many formative

assessments to use from ACT Aspire and when to use them. Also, the data reflection forms used by each school in our district were compared, contrasted, and revised so that the most important components of each tool were merged into one new district wide data reflection form. All teachers can use the same assessment reports to complete the same reflection tool for instructional improvements, regardless of what they teach. Protected time is scheduled during weekly team meetings for our educators to complete their data reflections and plan instruction based on their findings.

Another large focus area for that year was our communication strategies for our Student Intervention Teams. Teachers needed a more efficient way to communicate student progress and needs to school SIT Teams, and they also needed to hear more about the SIT Teams’ actions and decisions made for individual students. Similar to the assessment and data reflection forms, SIT referral forms and files were improved digitally so multiple teachers could contribute and communicate with SIT even if not physically present at weekly meetings. Regular SIT reporting cycles were also established for schools to make this process more efficient as well.

Fall of 2020 brought another opportunity for our Task Force to set annual goals on improving effectiveness and efficiency. The main areas of focus determined by this diverse group of educators were not surprising: Implementation of RISE & Science of Reading, Youth Mental Health, and all around character education for students related to accountability, responsibility, and becoming good citizens. Since our district is fortunate to have one of our own as a Youth Mental Health First Aid Trainer, our Task Force was quickly prioritized as the next cohort to be trained, and a district wide plan was established to train all staff members. We currently have trained well over 100 individuals, including some community members such as youth ministers, school based mental health providers, and more. Because the need for this support for teachers goes well beyond the task force, we have also prioritized training cohorts for our novice teachers and are making other training opportunities available in summer 2020 and beyond.

Current work of the Task Force is introducing the members to The Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL) and DESE’s Guide for Life. A district map of our current practices is under construction, including which of the four suggested approaches by CASEL is in place, whether it be Explicit Instruction, Teacher Instructional Practices, Integration with Academic Curriculum Areas, or Organizational Culture/Climate Strategies & Systems. This SEL district map is already helping us see gaps in the social and emotional skills not being intentionally taught to all students as they progress through school. Next steps will obviously be collaboration on how to fill those gaps and therefore address the Task Force’s focus areas of both character education and youth mental health. As for the support in RISE implementation, specific and intentional training, use of protected team meeting time, expanding the new knowledge well into our secondary schools, and providing targeted, new resources will assist us in staying the course of the Science of Reading.

Needless to say, as Greenbrier’s Task Force for Effectiveness and Efficiency has been established, the outcomes of its work has made a great impact on our school district. It has also allowed more streamlined communication about local and state level education topics. This core group of educators has evolved into an integral system for our district in setting the direction for improvements. My hope is that you can find some value in the task force work I have shared and possibly have some new ideas for distributed leadership across your own district and community.