An example of how Polaris strategically builds teachers' leadership competencies is based on the research outlined in An Everyone Culture: Becoming a Deliberately Developmental Organization.

School Growth

Polaris has sustained continuous improvements—School Growth—in order to deepen our impact across all three Dimension of Student Achievement.

Since our initial EL Education credentialing five years ago, Polaris has utilized EL Education's Core Practice 33: Leading Evidence-Based Strategic Improvement and Core Practice 35: Promoting Shared Leadership. Within these practices, Polaris' priorities have been to "create long-term goals and annual benchmarks," and, "strategically build the leadership capacity of others; high-functioning, data-informed, impact-oriented teams of educators drive improvement across the school."

While Polaris' mission has always been at the forefront of our school improvement efforts, we have greatly innovated the ways in which we align our long-term and annual strategic plans as well as creating systems that have empowered teams to lead school-wide initiatives.

Below, our portfolio will evidence the following:

At Polaris, we have dramatically improved our strategic planning process and shared leadership practices that have allowed for focused, sustainable school growth.

Strategic Planning

Credentialing Renewal Claims, Evidence & Benchmarks

Five Year Plan

We began the 2018-2019 school year at Polaris both looking back at the previous five years since our inaugural credentialing while simultaneously looking ahead to where we wanted our students to be when building our next Credentialing Portfolio. Our reflection culminated into a Five Year Plan; instead of planning year-to-year as we had previously done, we created a vision for focused growth in each Dimension of Student Achievement that systematically aligns future annual Work Plans. Polaris' Five Year Plan directly connects our goals for student achievement, details the progress-monitoring data to be collected, and outlines the benchmarks for meeting each goal. This shift in strategic planning has allowed us to more clearly articulate our vision for school improvement and develop systems that evidence long-term growth over time.

By going through the process of developing our Five Year Plan, we have been able to dramatically improve our annual Work Plans. The Work Plans linked above illustrate Polaris' transformation. Previously, data would be used to name the areas of greatest need to be addressed; now, our strategic plans include the following:

data benchmarks to progress monitor and evidence initiative outcomes
specific structures and leadership actions throughout the year to ensure robust support of teachers
calendared professional development scheduled to provide pacing of targeted school-wide initiatives
leadership goals to support continued growth across all three Dimensions of Student Achievement.

Subsequently, Polaris' initiatives have become more sustainable, focused, and aligned.

MTSS Process Overview

Furthermore, our Five Year Plan has allowed us to develop deeper processes to collect and analyze data on student achievement (e.g., Multi-Tiered System of Supports and Credentialing Data Profile) to better meet the needs of all learners.

Both the Instructional Leadership Team and Teacher Teams have been able to more effectively use data to drive instruction and spearhead breakthrough interventions that address trends in student need.

We see our transition in strategic planning as a lever for our continued highly implementing school status (q.v., Implementation Review Reports) where remarkable results are realized.

Shared Leadership

Shared Leadership Overview

Polaris ILT Member Overview

Instructional Leadership Team Member Overview

Instructional Leadership Team Meeting Agenda

Instructional Leadership Team Agendas

Since its inception, Polaris established a culture of teacher collaboration and innovation. While this culture has been a critical factor in student success, the perennial cycle of creation and revision stymied our ability to provide the systems, time, and support to explicitly develop teachers' leadership. During the 2017-2018 school year, we recognized the need to introduce a formal structure that provided the platform for teachers to grow as leaders with the charge of bringing our annual Work Plan to life across the school. To this end, we devised a plan - guided by Core Practice 35: Promoting Shared Leadership - to institute an Instructional Leadership Team (ILT). Monthly ILT meetings centered on leadership competencies while ILT subteams met concurrently every week to focus on a specific Dimension of Student Achievement.

The documents linked above evidence our school growth in Promoting Shared Leadership. Through the creation of the ILT, we have been able to vertically align our student reflection practices, collaboratively author a school literacy vision, and use student data to develop an intervention block that addresses gaps in foundational reading skills.

School Growth

At Polaris, we have dramatically improved our strategic planning process and shared leadership practices that have allowed for focused, sustainable school growth.

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School Growth

At Polaris, we have dramatically improved our strategic planning process and shared leadership practices that have allowed for focused, sustainable school growth.

Strategic Planning

Five Year Plan

Shared Leadership

Mastery

Character

Quality Work

School Growth