Leadership Development

The ongoing purpose of the Leadership Development Critical Workgroup is to build leadership capacity within our schools and district by creating authentic opportunities for leadership development. Through the development of the Leadership team’s action plan, the Leadership Development Critical Initiative Working Group will add building leadership capacity among current leaders and teachers in the Pacific East District to its focus.

In 2016, DoDEA implemented the Centers for Instructional Leadership(CIL) to address the professional learning gaps and support for above school-level leadership. The CIL works closely with district leadership in the Pacific East to ensure that our leaders receive the support they need. The Pacific CIL’s mission is four-fold: provide systemic leadership development and support, design and deliver professional development for the implementation and sustainment of systemic priorities, facilitate learning networks across districts, and build the capacity for proven innovative curriculum, instruction, and assessment. During these five years, the CIL has provided coaching to all leaders throughout the Pacific East district and provided professional learning in collaboration with district leadership. The CIL utilizes leadership summits, professional learning, and coaching to follow up and assure that leaders in the Pacific East district have the tools and strategies they need to support their school.

As part of the Pacific East continuous improvement journey, the Pacific East developed the Leadership Development Critical Initiative Working Group as one of our critical working groups aligned with the Pacific East District Strategic Plan. Data from the 2018 Internal review showed a lower than average score in indicator 2.5: Leadership engages stakeholders effectively in support of the system's purpose and direction. In response to the data results, The Leadership Development Working group aimed to identify and provide authentic leadership experiences to support the structures needed to implement the Pacific East Strategic theme and incorporate different levels of leadership from ISS , Administrators, and teachers striving for leadership in the Pacific East District. The team has begun to move leadership development from a systemic one-size fits all to an individualized needs-based program.

The Pacific East District Leadership Development group has positively impacted the district, as evidenced by:

• Provide effective, integrated support and professional experiences to identify elements of effective leadership

• Increase identified support for ISS toward district goals and initiative support through leadership coaching

• Increase opportunities for Aspiring Teacher Leaders to develop, recruit and obtain talented workforce

• Documents demonstrating the collaboration (Pacific East Design Team) that emerged between the CIL and the District during School Year 2018-2019: These documents demonstrate an increasingly intentional and impactful approach to analyzing the district’s needs around leadership support and the design and delivery of professional learning in the weekly leadership meetings of the district.

• Documents demonstrating behind the scenes design work from the CIL Team Members working with Pacific East District during School Year 2020-2021: These documents are tangible examples of how the Professional Practice Improvement Specialists and the Professional Development Specialist assigned to work with Pacific East worked to develop modules of professional learning based on the analysis of professional learning needs articulated by District Leaders.

• Documents demonstrating increasingly impactful collaboration between the CIL and Pacific East ISS Team, School Year 2020-2021: Working closely with ISS Team Members, key members of the District Steering Committee, and the Superintendent and Community Superintendents, the CIL team supported the design and delivery of professional learning to support the ISS Team in a collaborative learning structure, “ISS Home Week.” Highlights of the week included the presentation of the ADDIE model as a way of designing and delivering professional learning and the implementation of ISS focus groups to better understand the learning needs of the ISS team members.

• Documents demonstrating increasingly intentional collaboration with District Leaders and the ISS Team to design and deliver professional learning to school and district leadership, School Year 2020-2021: These documents substantiate an intentional and collaborative process to generate a full week residential professional learning experience for over 60 adults that supported key teaching and learning initiatives in the district, particularly around unifying district and school level priorities. Additionally focus groups were held with school leaders to ascertain their own understanding of the professional growth needs.

• Documents demonstrating continued growth in designing and developing meaningful professional learning for school and district leadership, School Year 2020-2021: Building on the work of the previous Spring, the CIL collaborated with district leaders and ISS team members to create another impactful week of professional learning that targeted the priority of refining school leaders’ understanding of the Learning Walkthrough process, the Focused Collaboration process, and the strategic emphasis on discourse as a primary pedagogical focus.