Standard 1: Teacher Leadership
Teacher leaders assume the roles and responsibilities of collaborative leaders in schools and communities. Teachers demonstrate leadership in their classrooms, schools and professional organizations; they advocate for students and effective educational practices and policies; and they are role models for ethical leadership. Indicators are:
- Demonstrate effective ongoing communication, collaboration, and team-building among colleagues.
- Facilitate mentoring and coaching with novice teachers.
- Set goals and establish priorities while promoting educational initiatives that positively affect student learning.
- Participate in professional learning communities.
Writing With Wordless Picture Books
Context:
During RE 5130, under the instruction of Dr. Elizabeth Frye and Dr. Woodrow Trathen, I utilized a wordless picture book to provide scaffolding as the whole class participated in composing text as a group to accompany the illustrations in the wordless picture book, The Picnic by Emily Arnold McCully. Using the wordless picture book led to an immediate transfer of skills in students' writing and students were empowered by this shared writing and eager to writer independently. One of my colleagues and I were eager to share the exciting results with our fellow teachers and administrators. Our principal invited us to share our results with other administrators at our county's principals' meeting and to conduct a presentation/training for K-6 teachers at our school. The PowerPoint was created to share the success of the wordless picture book and provide evidence for using the wordless picture book with administrators and school faculty.
Rationale:
The artifact demonstrates that I assume a leadership role in my classroom, school, and school system by utilizing and presenting best educational practices. I demonstrated a leadership role by presenting successes of scaffolding students' writing with the use of the wordless picture book and teaching other educators how to conduct shared writing with the use of a wordless picture book. Presenting the PowerPoint demonstrated that I support educational initiatives that positively affect students learning. In addition, the PowerPoint illustrates my willingness to coach other teachers. While many of the teachers we presented the PowerPoint to were veteran teachers, they were novices when it came to shared writing with the use of the wordless picture book. I answered questions, follow up questions, provided feedback to some as they implemented the strategy and modeled the strategy in others' classrooms.
Developmental Word Study Presentation
Context:
My Professional Learning Community (PLC) at my school consists of myself and four other second grade teachers. One of the members of my PLC began the reading master's program at Appalachian State University the year before I began. For her action based research project, she implemented Word's Their Way word study in her classroom. Another PLC member, who was in the same reading master's program through Appalachian State University as I, and myself were excited when she shared her research findings with us. We decided to implement developmental word study in our classrooms the following school year. We began the school year utilizing the Words Their Way Primary Spelling Inventory to assess, group and instruct students at their developmental spelling level. During the Spring semester of the school year, we had the opportunity to take RE 5534, Developmental Word Study with professor Nora Vines. After the course began, my PLC member/classmate and I were invited by our professor to share how Words Their Way fit into our instructional routine . The artifact was created to share our knowledge and instructional routines with classmates. We were later invited by our principal to do a staff training at our school and utilizing the same artifact.
Rationale:
The artifact demonstrates that I participate in professional learning communities, as I implemented Words Their Way into my classroom as a result of communication that took place during PLC meetings. After using the artifact to share how Words Their Way fits into our instructional routine with classmates in RE 5534, we assisted our classmates in scoring spelling inventories that they administered to their own classrooms and grouping students for instruction. We also shared our instructional routines and homework assignments that we partnered with Words Their Way. This artifact demonstrates that I facilitate mentoring and coaching with teachers who were novices using developmental word study. After presenting the artifact to our K-6 school, many teachers implemented Words Their Way into their classrooms and now our entire school is using developmental word study to assess, group, and instruct in spelling. Additionally, this artifact demonstrates that I set goals and establish priorities while promoting educational initiatives that positively affect student learning.