Design

The following document is my developed goals for my two chosen competencies and my Action Plan and details from Term 1:

• Professional Goals:

Competency 1: Group Processes

• Goal: I will mentor and lead new teacher leaders and groups by modeling respect for cultural diversity and equity for all staff.
• Goal: I will lead, manage, and mediate group dynamics and conflict via staff collaborating in grade level and PLC groups to achieve student goals and outcomes in a way that encourages staff to use their individual differences as strengths to promote diversity, equity, and cultural competence.

Competency 2: Adult Learning

• Goal: I will guide adult learning by leading professional learning activities to enhance educational practice.
• Goal: I will utilize strengths of specific colleagues to encourage adult learning and

empower colleagues to learn, design, and present their lessons to other colleagues.

Foundational Competency: Collaborate Purposefully

• Goal: I will create learning environments that value cultures for adults/students and will demonstrate awareness of difference between cultural groups.
• Goal: I will create involvement for stakeholders across cultures in planning, data gathering/analyzing, and decision making processes.

Pathway Competency: Coaching/Mentoring

• Goal: I will mentor colleagues to become teacher leaders in their departments by offering professional development ideas based on data analysis and instructional needs.
• Goal: I will seek opportunities to give and receive feedback on instructional practice.

Artifact 1-Action Plan:

• I will use my personal values described in my personal mission and vision statement (Artifact 3, Do section) when confronted with challenging educational decisions regarding staff, parents, and student behavior and achievement goals. I’m planning on improving my educational practice by leading and assisting staff in collaboration to achieve student learning and goals. I will utilize specific strengths of colleagues, which will encourage adult learning. Keeping learning groups actively engaged will be vital to my success as a future school leader. Professional development classes and activities will allow for staff engagement and be based on data analysis and instructional needs. I will model and lead my staff in the value and importance of group learning and collaboration and how it leads to student growth, as well as building higher staff morale. Collaboration will occur during staff PLC time. This will all start with setting expectations with my staff at the beginning of the school year and building positive rapport and relationships with staff immediately. I will keep my sole focus on leading staff collaboration, staff group engagement, and modeling to staff the importance of adult learning and its impact for teacher instruction and student learning/engagement. I will slowly develop each one of these components one step at a time.
• Each staff learning group will give staff an opportunity to use their backgrounds and experiences to promote diversity and cultural competence. My action plan will allow involvement for all stakeholders across cultures in data planning/analyzing and decision making processes. It will create opportunities that raise awareness for staff to present alternative solutions to inequality and social injustice issues. Finally, my action plan will allow for contributions from various stakeholders of cultures to plan, assess, and reflect on socially just learning environments. (Group Processes and Collaborate Purposefully) My action plan involves using my collaboration and cultural diversity survey results as my primary focus for the Do phase in my project. I will be meeting with my English and Math focus groups over the next few months to discuss ways to improve collaboration and cultural diversity in our school building and overall in our district.
• Actions that I will take with staff: Coach/mentor English/Math staff regarding instructional practices and proper use of accommodations to meet resource student needs and try to connect culturally diverse people together.
• Expected outcomes from Action Plans: increase in SPED students exiting resource programs into Reg. Ed. English and Math classes (3-4 students per school year), implementation of discussed instructional strategies and accommodations, develop a solid foundation of socially just practices and racism issues, increase of a minimum of 10-12 RIT points from Fall to Spring on NWEA scores during the 19/20 school year, use of teacher surveys (check-in's) bi-monthly, and reflect and provide feedback on the SPED to Reg. Ed. collaboration process ( google forms/discussion)

My survey data from the Learn phase surveys indicated the following areas of most evident needs for improvement for my overarching and pathway chosen competencies within my professional context:

• Adult Learning: Share teaching strategies to help students learn and meet needs, accommodate student’s special situations, stressing importance of diversity and equality, SPED staff provide area/time for extra work time to complete work/tests, embrace all perspectives, ideas, and creative processes
• Group Processes/Collaborate Purposefully: SPED to Reg. Ed. teachers meet weekly to discuss lessons/materials to help resource students, better communication to collaborate via Reg. Ed./SPED settings, check-in’s (what, student needs help with, filling in gaps), student updates weekly, and observing classrooms weekly (This will be the focus of my action plan and areas of need for my Do phase).

The teacher competency assessment showed higher ratings (4’s on a scale 1-4) for relevance for teaching and school priority than teacher proficiency. So, I focused on teacher proficiency based on my survey results from two teachers. 3/4 of the competencies from the survey were scored an average below 2, showing proficiency. Competency 2 had the highest average at 2.4. I focused on collaborating with the two teachers who filled out this survey on how to deliver high quality, evidence-based instruction. We discussed various strategies and approaches to increase teacher instruction. We will continue this discussion as we collaborate in August to improve our math department instruction and teaching methods.

Artifact 4: Cultural Diversity Self Assessment: 5 responses from teachers including myself:

Needs Assessment

The results of my Needs Assessment indicated two areas of concern. These questions on the survey were:

• I recognize that others stereotype me and I try to overcome their perceptions. 3/5 (60% of participants) indicated that they have encountered others stereotyping them.
• I understand the definition of internalized racism and how it impacts people of color. 3/5 (60% of participants) didn't understand this definition.

So, out of 20 questions among the 5 staff members who completed the cultural diversity Needs assessment, these were the only two questions of concern. Overall, staff understood and had a good concept of diversity and self-awareness. This is a good sign as we build staff moral from year to year. These concerns were not addressed and due to low number of respondents, I am unsure of addressing this issue in the upcoming school year.

1. My leadership as a SPED PLC group leader will be vital to the success of my proposed action plan. My leadership and persistence each week with my Reg. Ed. teacher population and administrators will allow for collaboration among on key stakeholders to meet my action plan goals. My leadership will drive other teachers to become confident and more involved in the decision-making process. Needs of key stakeholders will be addressed during weekly PLC meetings with the student needs at the forefront of every meeting.

2. Collaboration, questioning, data, reflection during implementation of action plan? I collaborate with my Reg. Ed. teachers almost on a daily basis regarding student IEP goals and needs, reg. ed. assignments/tests, etc. Collaboration will be used when looking at student's IEP goals and teaching and learning to meet this goals. If I have students in Reg. Ed. classes, I will need to support them in the resource room from their content and academic areas. I will question what Reg. Ed. teachers teach (unit and lesson plans available), and how I can support their curriculum in meeting the needs of my resource students. I will use grades, projects, quizzes as well as behavior check lists, check-in's with teachers (surveys, emails, face to face, etc.) for my data and progress reports. Finally, I will reflect each week on how my collaboration is going with my colleagues from my data results.

3. I will address any obstacles along the way in talking to Reg. Ed. teachers by confronting them face to face or via email to keep them informed on the components of my program (Core Plus-described later). We are all (or should be) in education to teach and assist kids at all times.

4. See artifacts and information in Do Section. This will be a work in progress over the next few years. I look forward to using the 'Core Plus' approach and sharing my knowledge and teaching others the importance of incorporating resource students into Reg. Ed. classrooms.