One of the things that I've learned over the past month is who in the building will do what they need to do with little support and whom I need to follow up with and stay with to ensure that they do their part. Getting these testing certificates done was a huge push. I also can do a better job providing more exact training to the staff. I saw where the gaps started to pop up as we met the different platforms to engage in testing. It's nice that in the spring we'll be using all of the same platforms again, so there won't be as much of a learning curve for the staff when it comes to that.
Now that testing is done, it's good to be able to focus on the parts of my job that I really like doing. Bea and I are working together well to create professional learning opportunities for the staff that help drive growth and achievement of our school improvement goals. We're slowly creating better routines and procedures for school-wide actions; there weren't really any of these before. Finding more ways to get more teachers on board with high-impact practices is definitely the way to go. Shifting culture is hard, and it takes a lot of time, but I think that we're laying the foundation to take this work to a valuable place where we can have an impact on student achievement, engagement, and make this school a better place to teach and learn.
So, November becomes a main focus on data based interventions and planning. We've got tested subject data days coming, support from the district, and the next phases of our own professional learning cycle. I'm also doing more work to support teachers, and I like doing that work. Let's just start seeing some of the shifts come out in the practices and in the data that teachers are seeing. Then they'll keep coming back for more. For the next few days, though, I'm taking a break. I think I've earned it after October.
