Session 2: Supporting Professional Growth through Monitoring

In this session, there are four questions that will be answered. There are four parts of this module and each answers the questions respectively.

• How do you begin the Technical Assistance?

• How do you decide what technical assistance to provide?

• How do you conduct your technical assistance?

• How do you get evidence of the impact of your conduct?

To begin answering these questions, let us look into observation tools administered to a teacher by the school head and another given to a school head administered by the supervisor. Examine the items and results for both observation tools.

ANALYSIS

Given the results in the monitoring tool…

1. What pattern of strengths have you noticed about the school head?

2. What pattern of weakness have you noticed about the school head?

3. Why do you need this data?

4. What will you do to further support the SH?

5. What kind of questions did you use in the conversation?

6. Was the monitoring tool easy to use?

You begin your technical assistance by gathering information about the current status of the situation. This situation can be the performance of the teacher of the school head. Collecting such information will help us focus on the specific kind of assistance we need to provide. Like what you did you have commended the good performance and probed deeper into the areas that needs further support. The data that you have helps to be sensitive to the instructional needs of the teachers and the leadership needs of the school head.

When you go through this process of conversing with the teacher such as asking questions about your observations, you start to build a culture of inquisitiveness and generating strategies. This conversation that happens between the teacher and the school and between the school head and district supervisor helps you focus on improving performance. This action is an important characteristic of a learning organization.

This process of creating a culture of inquisitivenes and generating strategies will be taken up in the next session.