Describe your plan of action and how each of your four chosen competencies will influence its design and implementation.
*Diversity, Equity, and Cultural Competence
Collaborate Purposefully:
Developing:
*Develop and exhibit an appreciation and acceptance for the differences among, between, and within cultural groups.
*Explain the value and benefits of including other cultural groups in their collaborative groups.
*Explain the strengths and limitations of their skills and /or organizational practices when interacting with other cultural groups.
*Engage in ongoing self education and self improvement.
Evidence:
*Create learning environment for students and/or adults to include and value cultures beyond their own.
*Involve students, parents, colleagues, and/or community members from various cultures to create opportunities and activities that celebrate and value cultural differences.
*Explain the limitations of their skills and practices when engaging with other cultural groups and take steps to adjust behavior based on self reflection.
*Artifacts of the research and reading I have done to understand the limitations of my skills and adjust behavior based on self reflection can be seen in the Learn tab.
**I have begun to collaborate purposefully with the Middle School by having conversations ‘explaining the strengths and limitations of their skills and/or organizational practices when interacting with the incoming Native students’. Collaborating with the counselor at the middle school we are working to create a situation where they understand the unique limitations our students have due to cultural differences and have brought the key players into the elementary building on the reservation to include them in a PD opportunity Trauma Informed Communities and Restorative Justice Practices. Although I don’t believe we have begun to implement a plan moving forward, I do believe the discussion have started and misunderstandings between the buildings are being corrected and past walls are being torn down. I have begun discussion with my administrator focusing on moving supportive meetings for parents of fifth graders to our elementary building, which is closer and more comfortable to parents. I have read and researched the history of the oppression of the Native peoples over the last year so I can better understand my stakeholders and know how to move forward with these meetings. By doing this I am hoping to create and facilitate involvement for the stakeholders from the community, who in the past have questioned and mis-trusted the school district. I am going to move forward next year to ask them what they see the needs are for their students success as well as educate them on a school system they may not be familiar with due to limited access to school in the past and a traumatic experience with the system.
As stated above I have delved into talking and researching the past educational experiences the people of my community have experienced. In order to understand the present, we must understand the past. Everyone brings baggage and researched shows that the trauma the grandparents of my students experienced has been breed into their DNA. Even though students today live with cell phones and the newest NIKE tennis shoes, they still live with one foot in each world. The trauma the students experience daily, on top of the past, has left my students unable to take a big breath and relax. This causes behavioral issues that often have nothing to do with actual situations that occur. My awareness of this situation means that I have a job of educating the administrator of the middle school, who often deal with the academic and behavioral issues, that they need to be aware of the cultural background of these kids and not take the attitude that it’s in the past and celebrating a week of Native American Days makes the students feel accepted. I will be working with the administration next year to help them understand the difference between inequity and inequality. I have taken on the goal of moving myself from Emerging to Developing in the Explore and Challenge Inequity Competency by engaging in ongoing self-education to learn about the culture of our students but I can’t make everyone take the initiative to do the same. In this I will have to be a voice for the students who currently lack one. It is a sticky conversation to discuss cultural differences and practices which create inequities but I for one was not clear on the difference between inequity and inequality. Building relationships will be my goal for next year so I can then begin to make change.
The capstone plan regularly engages me in Collaborating Purposefully due to my colleagues and I having scheduled monthly grade level meetings, monthly grade level meetings with our literacy coach, and impromtu meetings after school. Due to the fact the two teachers I work with are from different places than I grew up, all three of us have had to develop an appreciation and acceptance for our differences in dealing with situations and communications. We have worked together to create better learning environments for our students by valuing their culture.
ARTIFACTS : 3-4
*Reflective Practice: Help to create conditions to encourage reflection among colleagues and administrators.
Engage in leadership opportunities both inside and outside of the classroom and school.
Make strategic plans that are informed by data and reflective analysis.
Evidence: Increase awareness of teacher leadership and growth areas by use of needs assessment, formal surveys, and or informal surveys.
Serve as a teacher leader both inside and outside of the classroom and or school.
Improve practice and or professional growth by using data analysis or SMART goals.
**Working on the Reflective Practice I have grown through my experience in the TLI practice on how to work with my team to be more reflective in their own practices. I have the opportunity to car pool with one of my team members and through modeling I have been able to get her to look to her practice instead of at the students. We have been able to team to teach summer school and reflect on the skills our students need at the fifth grade level and bring them to the students we are working with to build their knowledge base. My second team member was able to reflect on the struggles of students we have sent on to the middle school in the past and came up with an idea to have a panel of past students from our school give advice and answer questions from our classes. I contacted the administration and we worked together to put the panel together and set up the presentation. I like to think I have moved to a firm Developing in this area. I believe the work I did to build relationships helped to create the conditions to encourage reflections among my colleagues. Although we did not use data to develop strategic plans when reorganizing the orientation visitation we have each year, we did use informal data of past students visitations. These informal visits consisted of them telling us what they wished they knew before transitioning.
*Communication:
Acknowledge the challenge of successful teaching and learning and willingly address and meet those needs. ARTIFACT 5
Share messages to inspire others.
Evidence:
Understand school’s challenges and needs that impact teaching and learning and/or system effectiveness.
**I believe I have improved in this competencies in that I have been able identify the leadership style of my colleagues which has helped me to encourage them to find their voices and work more as a team. I have used ideas they have hesitantly expressed to me and by giving them credit I have helped bring them to fruition. We have a much better collaboration and have worked as a team to get data and behavioral information to the middle school about the incoming fifth graders. We have worked as a team instead of relying on one team leader and have gone to our grade level meetings as a working unit. We showed this by showing a 14% increase in our assessment scores by sharing instructional strategies and encouraging not only each other but the students outside of our own classrooms.
The capstone plan regularly engages me in my chosen Pathway Competency, Instructional Leadership, by continuing the value I place on professional growth when it benefits not only my personal students but the students of the entire fifth grade and eventually a system which will benefit the school and community. I have worked this year to reflect on my interpersonal skills to establish a trustworthy environment where we can exchange ideas and work together for the best educational opportunities for the students. I have seen this not only with my fifth grade team but also with my instructional coach who has opened up to discussions she usually shut down.
Community Awareness, Engagement, and Advocacy:
*Emerging: Recognize the unique needs, culture, and context of the students and advocate for their learning and well being.
*Demonstrate awareness of their community by advocating for unique students needs with sensitivity to culture and context.
How will your leadership leverage the strengths and address the needs of diverse stakeholders to support the plan of action, develop capacity, broaden decision-making, and learn collaboratively?
Although it may seem obvious that everyone brings their own educational background to the table I didn’t really take the time to reflect on the past of my students and their culture. My administrator with often talk about the trauma of the grandparents, who are raising the students now, and how it affects their opinion of school. I was under the idea that it was in the past. However it is not in the past and it needs to be taken into account when teaching the students. Delving into the transition from elementary to middle school took me far beyond where I thought I was going. I thought the problem stemmed from the integration into a mixed race school, from a school where not only are all the students native, but they have attended the same school together for at least five years. When I began to talk to parents and students I realized parents, or grandparents, do not understand the system of the school or their students plan for graduation. While I am beginning with the transition at the middle school level, the plan is to bring the stakeholders in and begin the educational pathway with them so they can better support the students.
ARTIFACTS for this question are FOUND UNDER the LEARN tab