Key Questions and Strategies for Leaders
Key Questions
Leadership Matters
Key Strategies
Are you focusing sufficient effort on effective strategies to improve instruction, curriculum and equity in student learning?
If the answer is 'no,' what are your next steps?
My goal is to help leadership teams frame these questions and see possibilities for next steps to improve instruction and equity of student learning.
Key Strategies
Leadership Matters
Key Strategies
The school district leaders who wish to improve the performance of all students within the system….
articulate and enact a unifying vision of instructional quality while maintaining
some level of local flexibility.
(Jonathan Supovitz, The Case for District Based Reform, 2006, pp 1)
The dramatically improving school includes these key el
The school district leaders who wish to improve the performance of all students within the system….
articulate and enact a unifying vision of instructional quality while maintaining
some level of local flexibility.
(Jonathan Supovitz, The Case for District Based Reform, 2006, pp 1)
The dramatically improving school includes these key elements [of a unifying vision
of instructional quality].
(10 Strategies for Doubling Student Performance, Allan Odden, 2009, p. 133)
This is the heart and soul of of high quality curriculum and instruction.
- Curriculum mapping
- Adopts new curriculum materials with a well designed curriculum review cycle
- Adopts (creates) an instructional point of view
- Assessment and data driven decision making
Leadership Matters
Leadership Matters
Leadership Matters
"Schools and districts have significant control over issues that can lead to dramatic improvements in student learning.... Schools can execute multiple aligned strategies that have been shown to have large impacts on student learning."
(Odden, 2009, pp xi-xii)
Leadership is essential to these two prerequisite strategies to impact stakeh
"Schools and districts have significant control over issues that can lead to dramatic improvements in student learning.... Schools can execute multiple aligned strategies that have been shown to have large impacts on student learning."
(Odden, 2009, pp xi-xii)
Leadership is essential to these two prerequisite strategies to impact stakeholders:
Understanding the Performance Challenge
Create a sense of urgency in admin, teachers and parents,
Consider more deeply the purposes of education
Set High Goals
Create a collaborative vision with very ambitious goals to guide the system
Use SMART goals to track progress, but they will not drive dramatic, transformational, improvement
About Fred and Ellen
Over forty years leading schools, school districts, consortia of districts, and state-wide associations in creating more effective, equitable, and efficient student learning.
About Fred
Fred works with educators in the following ways:
- Advocated for and creates professional development partnerships for 230 rural Minnesota school districts as Executive Director of the Minnesota Rural Education Association (MREA) from 2011-2020.
- Director of Secondary Reform in Northern MN through Reflective Professional Development, an MREA-AIW Blandin and NW MN Foundations project with five Northern MN high schools.
- Certified Coach of Authentic Intellectual Work to develop acdemic rigor, relevancy beyond the classroom and relationships at the secondary and upperelementary level.
- Facilitates district or school direction setting leadership workshops based on these 10 strategies and staff readiness.
- Facilitates district or secondary school leader workshops dedicated to getting “110% Effort from 100% of your Students on Mandated Tests,” based on how successful head coaches prepare teams. Educational leaders are encouraged to bring successful head coaches.
- Facilitates union-management teams to develop clear, well understood, standards based teacher growth and evaluation plans leading to union ratification and school board approval.
- Coaches faculties in curriculum mapping and in the skills of curricular analysis and improvement using maps.
- Coaches administrators and leadership teams in implementing strategic plans for educational improvement and the distracters to the mission.
About Ellen
In E & F, the "E" is Ellen Siewert
Currently and in the past Ellen is:
- German teacher extraordinaire: “Frau” for Princeton High School for over the past two decades, and in Maynard and Pelican Rapids prior to Princeton
- Keynote speaker for educational events and graduations
- Designer and facilitator of mentoring programs
- Trainer of teachers who teach via Distance Learning