In this course, I chose to focus on Leadership Disposition #6: develop the professional capacity of school personnel.  My SMART goal related to this disposition was: I will build capacity and support developing leaders within the English Language Development team at Fort Collins High School by sharing the process, and delegating progress monitoring and re-designation of multilingual learner tasks before the end of the 2023-24 school year (5/30/2024).

This disposition and goal align with Leadership competency from Transforming Professional Practice component 1b - Builds Shared Leadership, including sub-elements: advocates for staff and students, works collaboratively with stakeholders, promotes development of teacher and administrative leaders, delegates tasks based on interests and skill sets, and builds consensus with appropriate stakeholders.

In order to meet this goal, I laid out the following action steps:

1. Meet with English Development Team members to discuss upcoming deadlines with regards to progress monitoring and re-designation of students in the English Language Development Program.

2. Share resources with team members and model the process necessary to meet program deadlines.  Identify stakeholders to connect with and assign roles and deadlines to team members.

3. Reconnect with English Development Team to debrief results of assignments.  Allow team members to share challenges and work collaboratively to overcome these challenges.

4.  Check to ensure all assignments have been completed before end of school year on 5/30/2024.

Prior to the end of year progress monitoring and redesignation deadlines, I prefaced upcoming tasks with the members of the ELD team.   I scheduled a time for us to meet to collaboratively complete tasks.  I delegated tasks to individual members.  In doing so, I reflected on the individual strengths of each of my team members, and assigned tasks that reflected their strengths.  During meeting time as a team, I modelled the process to complete progress monitoring and redesignation of ELD students.  Through a collaborative process, we came to a consensus with regards to student strengths and areas of improvement.  To finalize the process, I delegated additional remaining tasks to the team members.  In a final debrief, I asked team members for feedback about what changes, for the benefit of student achievement, could be made for the coming school year.

In reflecting on growth with regards to this goal and leadership disposition, I feel that I have successfully taken steps toward developing the professional capacity of ELD team members.  As the department leader of the English Language Development Department at Fort Collins High School, I am tasked with ensuring that progress monitoring and redesignation of multilingual learners occurs following the district protocol.  My view toward this disposition has evolved over the short time of this course.  At times it is easier to complete a task on one’s own, rather than taking the time to educate people about the process.  This, however, does not help develop professional capacity.  Because doing tasks on my own can be one of my shortcomings, I decided to focus on this leadership disposition.   

Strides have been made, but there is always room for continuous improvement.  Now that various ELD tasks have been modelled, in the 2024-2025 school year, it would be beneficial to build even more capacity within the ELD team to take on additional responsibilities, including progress monitoring, assessment of new students, and communication with the staff at FCHS.  In accordance with this, the ELD team members will meet with administration at the beginning of 2024-2025 school year to clearly define roles and responsibilities of team members with regards to team duties.

As part of the CSU Global course, EDL 500: Strategic Leadership, I solicited feedback from ELD team members in a Stages of Concern Survey.  Refer to the survey linked here. Team members shared ideas for improvement of our program for the benefit of student achievement.  Prior to the start of the 2024-2025 school year, we will revisit these initiatives and prioritize which are feasible to implement for the coming year. 

According to Transforming Professional Practice, including collaboratively developed initiatives will not only foster investment from teachers as stakeholders, but it will also make us a stronger team overall (Strike et al., 2019) .  I have grown into this leadership disposition, and for the sake of our department as whole, and the academic growth and achievement of the MLs of Fort Collins High School, I intend to continue to promote and foster the professional capacity of our team.

References: 

Strike, K. T., Sims, P. A., Mann, S. L., & Wilhite, R. K. (2019). Transforming professional practice: A framework for effective leadership (2nd ed.). Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.