Design

Describe your plan of action and how each of your four chosen competencies will influence its design and implementation.

Inserted below is Artifact 7 which is my Capstone Plan. This was a powerful experience for me because I finally felt like I had a strong sense of what I wanted to accomplish, but not yet a map for how I was going to get there. The action plan helped me align my chosen competencies to this end goal and make a clear plan of accomplishments with dates assigned to them. This helped me get the ball rolling with my project.

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?

As you can see below, in Artifact 8 and 9 I communicated consistently with my colleagues with our group email chain and was open and willing to meet and collaborate as often as they wanted. I felt the feedback was encouraging and energizing. I tried to leverage the strengths of the stakeholders by asking conversationally how things were going, offering books and resources to those in the group. See Artifact 9 below an email chain with the middle school teacher who was hoping to observe and see what workshop looked like in my classroom. I also lent her one of my favorite books about teaching (a love of) reading The Book Whisperer by Donalyn Miller. She wasn’t able to make it down to my classroom at the end of the year, but we have made plans to do it next year! This was an important bridge and diverse stakeholder because the middle school is very separate from the elementary school in many ways and it was important to work towards building this bridge and conversation about how to better our teaching.

How will you use collaboration, questioning, data, and reflection during the implementation of your action plan?

Collaboration: The simple act of communicating with my colleagues to plan the group meetings requires collaboration. I need to be mindful of their schedules when arranging a date and purposeful when using their feedback from the forms and previous meetings when planning the agenda for the next meeting. Refer to Artifact 8 and 9.

Questioning: My survey is prompting my colleagues with questions regarding what they would like to accomplish as a group. I will use these to guide the meetings, but I will also need to be prepared to question them during meetings as well. Refer to Artifact 2 of the survey questions and results.

Data: I will use the data from the survey to determine how/when I organize meetings. I will use their feedback from this as well as from our email chain. Refer to to Artifact 2 and 3 of the survey responses/data.

Reflection: I will need to reflect after the first meeting and see what I can do better and how I want to improve or change things for the next time. I feel like I can do this also as I go through my checklist and reflect, change and implement as I go. See Artifact 10 of the agenda document. You can see the changes from the first (very simple) agenda on 4/15, to the much more detailed second agenda on 5/20. This shows my reflection and desire to be a better prepared and thoughtful leader in our meetings.

How will you address obstacles that you may encounter in implementing your plan?

I felt as though I was dragging my feet, so making the action plan, hanging it up by my desk and checking off each step was very meaningful for me. This helped me to see what my plan was on a daily basis and feel accomplished when I was able to check something off. If I encounter obstacles, I plan to reflect and adjust as I go. I have realized this process needs to be organic and meaningful to me and my colleagues. If something doesn’t feel right or fit, what is the point of forcing it? I am in no position to make more work for myself or my colleagues and so if I realize what I am doing isn’t working, I need to be flexible and change.

How will you know if your action plan is successful? What evidence would support your claim?

I feel the best piece of evidence to support success is if teachers are willing and eager to continue to meet. If we get to the end of the year and the group fizzles and it feels forced to continue it, I think it won’t have amounted to what I was hoping. If teachers are eager to meet again, or start up at the start of the year, I think it will be a success in even a small way. The desire to keep the conversation, make changes and push our thinking around reading instruction will feel incredible!

Evidence that will support this will be communication that shows a desire to continue to meet, or collaboration that continues to the end of the year.