School Centered Analysis Artifact

Over the past year working at Iditarod Elementary as both a Physical Education Teacher and Intern Principal, I found this new environment different in both the size of the school, amount of staff members, age group, and moral of the staff. Prior to that, I have worked at the high school level with over 100 staff members and over 1000 students. Currently, at the elementary school, I work with less than 30 staff members and under 360 students. The main 3 issues I could identify from my staff is inconsistent discipline at all grade levels, lack of cohesiveness within the staff and a weak focus towards our vision/mission school statement. Looking at our staff, we are a pre-k to 5th grade school. The first issue is to focus on consistent discipline was an issue for all teachers and grade levels throughout the school year, primarily due to the lack of support at the administrative level. During the 4th quarter, a discipline committee was developed and it was made up of several teachers from both primary and intermediate levels, our instructional coach, and our principal. The problem was that this issue should have been addressed at the beginning of the school year and laid out so we all could address common liberties and that all the teachers where involved in the process from each grade level. The 2nd issue was the lack of collaboration of all staff members in the development of relationships towards, not only from team grade bonds, but all staff as a hole. The common denominator was that all grades levels had the same prep period, but the staff, being so small in numbers, didnt have an opportunity to work together across the grade levels. The 3rd issue was the inability to have a clear focus on our school mission and vision statement. As a staff, we could read the mission statement online from our school website, but there was nothing clear about our vision as a staff. At times I felt as if we lived on separate islands in regards to the purpose of our common goals for our school, staff and students. These three issues concerned me. My personality and ability to communicate with others, both by listening and asking questions in how we can improve as a staff, verbally support our staff on the positive things they are doing can help improve upon these issues. Assuming that I was going to be the principal at my school, these are the ways I would change my school. First, at the beginning of the school year, I would have our staff help develop our mission and vision statement as a staff and we all would have ownership in the process. We would brainstorm ideas as to

how we could make better use of it our school, with our staff, and student. The focus would be our students and how we would develop a positive atmosphere for all. Next, I would focus on developing a better cohesive group of teachers working together. We have weekly staff meetings, which I feel is over-kill. I would use staff meetings to focus towards relationships within our staff would only be staff meetings, but bi-monthly. These meetings would be geared towards staff development and a combination of celebration. Our morning staff meetings would have treats for the teachers to honor their services so that they feel rewarded for the good job they are all doing. I would schedule monthly breakfasts that would be planned by each grade level on the 3rd Friday of each month. Each grade level would have the opportunity to develop a celebration breakfast. The purpose of this would be so that the staff could meet and speak to each other on a personal level rather than a regular staff meetings. Lastly, I would focus on developing consistent discipline that can be used at the start of the new school year that would concentrate on the use of a common language and consequences for all students. The first major point is the development of a student handbook. This handbook would lay-out all of our rules and the consequences for each different rule broken. To me this would again take in consideration that at least one staff member from each grade level give their input on what is age appropriate. Although this process was starting to be developed at the later part of the school year, a better approach would be to start at the beginning of the year so it can be used throughout the school year. If changes need to be made, we can continue the process as a working document for the first year. As a whole, every situation may be different for discipline and I believe it would be a better way to communicate to our school and community of students, staff and parents with a student handbook. As a principal, your guided leadership is most important by having focus, communicating well with others, and being able empower your staff so that they have opportunities to develop strong bond. Understanding and listening to your staff for their situational awareness is a key factor so that you can support and help your staff develop a better relationship within each member. Being able to see the importance of stopping and listening to everyones point of view is going to help develop the bigger picture at your school, not only for the principal; but for your entire staff.