- Hiring the best teachers
- Supporting current teachers to be the best they can be
Those two things are probably at the forefront of any Principal's short list. The following should be as well:
- Being visible and approachable for students (and developing relationships with students)
- Being the primary agent for curricular accountability in the school... unless you have a whole team that does this collaboratively!
Being the person, or part of a team that effectively asks 'are we doing all that we should for students' is an enormous challenge and I think it is certainly one domain that distinguishes schools from each other.
Our team includes the rest of our building administration, our department supervisors, and our central administration. We each play a different role based upon our perspective and these are described here (note that the following description is similar in other school districts but often not identical because of any number of variables):
- Superintendent
- Very different district to district
- some have no impact on curriculum b/c they manage budget, legal issues, and personnel issues
- some have a huge imprint on curriculum b/c they see it as a necessity of their responsibility
- In BC we have a dedicated Assistant Superintendent for Curriculum and Instruction because of how demanding both roles are at all times
- Assistant Superintendent
- Coordinates a consistent curriculum between grade levels (for example, from 5th to 6th grade) by working closely with Principals and Department Supervisors
- BC also uses TEACHER LEADERS in various roles to assist in this process
- Coordinates a consistent understanding of all state mandated assessment and mandated curriculum that will be implemented in each school
- Director for Special Education
- Leads the instructional programming and service provisions necessary for not just students with identified needs but for all students indirectly
- Department Supervisors
- They specialize in their area of expertise to understand
- The best methods of instruction
- The best methods of assessment
- Coordinate smooth transitions between grade levels
- Coordinate developmentally appropriate expectations at each grade level
- Coordinate consistency in teaching within each grade level
- Lead the professional development efforts for teachers
- Lead the hiring process of new teachers in partnership with Principals
- Building Administration
- Review data from grading and assessments and share with Teachers, and supervisors
- Conduct observations and evaluations of teachers
- Support teacher growth (with content supervisors) by focusing on consistent, developmentally appropriate teaching tactics
- Support the developmental needs of students at the grade levels in their buildings
- Support teachers in creating an environment that values engagement, rigor and focus for all students
These are the people who support our TEACHERS, but there are processes that drive what I would call an ethically responsive school philosophy. Some of these are listed here:
- Use of Data
- Too much of education is driven by "what feels right" (intuition)
- Unfortunately, great teachers are aware that there is a domain of learning that is "counterintuitive," In other words, if you only do what feels right, you miss this entire domain.
- Data helps us ask and conclude if our students are learning... period!
- It doesn't necessarily direct us toward better instruction but it will tell us if our current instruction is working.
- Types of data
- State assessments - help us gauge how we are doing both internally and externally (compared to other schools)
- Internal Assessments - allow us to align specific assessments to specific standards we have just taught to assess how our instruction is doing
- Grading data - allows us to have deep discussion about whether the way we grade influences students learning, if we are grading what we in fact want to measure and ensures that we have greater consistency between teams in the building
- Qualitative data - qualitative data are observations that are often hard to quantify.
- How many students raised their hands to questions in class?
- How many students are guessing to get the right answer?
- How many students are really engaged at any moment of a class?
The cycle of data used by schools also (often) determines how effective a school is. Schools who want to be average look at some data but it's often either too broad, to narrow, or not done more than just a few times in the year. Effective cycling of data analysis occurs with the following:
- Frequency - with unit tests, quarter tests, mid-terms and after final exams
- At the broad levels of both state-wide and school-wide
- At the narrow levels of the individual student and even the individual question
- This is an area where our Department Supervisors excel!
- AND at the observational level. Teachers get observed about every 10 weeks at a minimum and as a requirement the evaluators provide feedback in three domains:
- The instructional domain - how the actual flow and progression of the lesson is carried out
- The planning domain - how the plan did or could have made the instructional delivery better
- The affective (or student rapport) domain - how the teacher engaged and related to students during instruction (an often over-looked domain)
So who are all of these people? You know your child's teachers, or we at least hope you do. If you don't you should always feel welcome to reach out and ask questions. As to our other leaders please also feel welcome to reach out to any of the individuals below at any time.
Thank you for taking the time to learn about how we hold ourselves accountable!
- Superintendent (Interim) - Jody Monroe - jmonroe@bcsd.neric.org
- Assistant Superintendent (Interim) - Dave Hurst - dhurst@bcsd.neric.org
- Director of Special Education, Kathy Johnston, kjohnston@bcsd.neric.org
- Building Admin
- Principal, Mike Klugman, mklugman@bcsd.neric.org
- Assistant Principal, Mark Warford, mwarford@bcsd.neric.org
- Hall Principal, Ken Rizzo, krizzo@bcsd.neric.org
- Our Department Supervisors
- Mathematics - David Hurst (also our interim Assistant Superintendent)
- English Language Arts - Andy Baker, abaker1@bcsd.neric.org
- Social Students & Business - Nick Petraccione, npetraccione@bcsd.neric.org
- Science & Technology - Jen Gonyea, jgonyea@bcsd.neric.org
- Health, FACS, & PE - Fred Powers, fpowers@bcsd.neric.org
- Art - Melanie Painter, mpainter@bcsd.neric.org
- Music - David Norman, dnorman@bcsd.neric.org
- World Languages - Sarah Cioffi (interim), scioffi@bcsd.neric.org
- Committee for Special Education Middle School Chairperson,
- Meg Wyanski, mwyanski@bcsd.neric.org
