How did you DO it?!

1. Identify the part(s) of your plan you were able to implement (given the nature of leadership work, your project may actually continue beyond submission of your capstone portfolio).

   • I was able to meet with my principals a few times throughout the year on very small issues in my classroom.

   • I interviewed specific parents about their child's experiences in my class, what was working and what was not.

   • A few times I worked with my mentor on how to respond to adverse parents in various settings, including emails and in meetings. Some parents were hostile, some were simply critical.

   • When faced with a difficult decision I was able to ask for mentorship from fellow educators on how to handle an adverse situation with my administration.

   • At the end of the year I self-advocated for a meeting about my end-of-year review, which did not include an observation of my teaching nor evidence of claims made.

2. How successful was your plan of action at addressing the challenge? Which stakeholders and practice or program were impacted? How do you know (site evidence)?

   • Personally I feel my plan of action was completely changed as the year went on. Due to aggressively critical parents and then the impact of COVID-19 I spent most of the year trying to self-advocate and survive. Upon reflection I have learned a great deal about how to be a leader, including the fact that those in survival-mode do not produce their best work.

   • As far as lasting impact goes, I do not think I achieved one this year. Due to my defensiveness and concern for my job I lost sight of the bigger picture, which I think negatively impacted my situation! Recognizing this I believe that I will be able to guide and support other teachers who may encounter a similar situation in the future. I have also discovered the things I wish I had at the time that would have supported me.

3. How were your four chosen competencies used in the implementation of your project?

   • Interpersonal Effectiveness: I attempted to work my way through developing trust through transparency and communication. I worked to reflect back on my vision for student success with each stakeholder. Rather than developing trust and building credibility much of my communication was used against me. My colleagues were very supportive and have demonstrated their trust in my abilities and my humility for my subject.

   • Personal Effectiveness: I overcame extreme amounts of adversity through this project, though that adversity also threw me off and affected my mental health, which in turn affected my classroom. This has led to many changes I have made, which I will discuss in my reflection. This has required further learning about how to balance the role as a leader both in and out of the classroom. I allowed myself to get talked over durning parent meetings, ignored during staff meetings, and harshly criticized without evidence. I then came back towards the end of the year and developed strategies to self-advocate, including explicitly stating the best practices I follow.

   • Explore and Challenge Inequality: Unfortunately the most work I did in this area was reaching out to one of our Special Education professionals to find out how I could improve my support of her students in my classroom. This led me to research in depth the differences in how students with learning disabilities process information, which resulted in me completely changing my assessment strategy for the second semester (pre-COVID) . This is evidenced by the change in my gradebook titles, noted below.

   • Coaching/Mentoring: Each step of this year was a coaching and mentoring moment for me. I reached out beyond just my mentor for lots of advice on how to respond to parents, administrators, and how to structure my classroom. What I was missing, I believe, is my PERSONAL EFFECTIVENESS! Without that personal understanding much of this coaching and mentoring was difficult if not impossible to implement, as I was trying to completely emulate someone else without a strong sense of confidence in myself. Each time a colleague has reached out to me since this realization I have first encouraged them to identify how they personally identify with the situation, helping them to find their own solution rather than giving them mine.

4. What obstacles, if any, did you encounter? How did you address them?

   • Part-way through the year I was faced with parents that accused me of not caring about their child, bullying their child, and failing him in the classroom. This completely surprised me, as I was under the impression I had a very positive relationship with this student, and had many positive emails between myself and one of the parents. I looked to my administrator and mentor heavily during this time. Unfortunately, without much data from observations or my own records, it was more difficult to defend myself.

5. Given the outcomes, describe any changes you might make to the Capstone project plan of action.

   • Based on how difficult it was to develop a system of feedback organically through discussion and meetings, moving forward I need to develop a form of record keeping. I need to bring forward a Best-Practice for educator feedback based on research and have a plan to support and implement that before I go into meetings and discussions with stakeholders.

Evidence