Structure of Seminars
As an integral part of the program is a series of seminars with embedded field-based experiences,culminating in a full internship so that graduates may immediately enter the principalship as“turn around”change agents. Field-based experiences are planned by university professors with the studentsand their clinical supervisors/mentors in order to design relevant activities that help the aspiring school leaders develop leadershipskills that produce improved teaching and learning. Through the seminar and field experience, each student maintains a reflectivejournal. In addition, reflections are self analyzed using the Belief Matrix (Stader, 2003) which has proven successful for thepurposes of defining one’s growth and development of skills and dispositions. Finally,rigorous, ongoing assessment is conductedthroughout the seminars. For example, students are required to lead a team of faculty members in several activities, which are observedand assessed by the university instructors of record and/ordistrict mentor, using a preset rubric for each. Who developed the rubric and what are some key items on it?
Face-to-face class sessions are team taught with other professors and school district leaders. Students proceedthrough the program as a cohort, sentence is too long—make it two sentences) mirroring the type of learning community that they needto form in their schools as leader. The cohort model facilitates the building of group and individual knowledge and the solving ofproblems from multiple viewpoints.
Thematic seminarsinclude research-based best practices from the Southern Regional Education Board (SREB),ELCCStandards, action research, portfolio development, and technology utilization. The traditional knowledge base ofleadership/management that features educational theory, history, management, school/community relations, human resource management,finance and law are integrated throughout the program. The curriculum spirals with reviewed concepts, new concepts, discovery,and reflection. Each seminar is infused with case study analysis and simulation exercises of technical leadership, instructionalleadership, and professional development for school improvement. The seminars build skills gradually, from observing, participating,leading small teams to whole faculty, and finally to leading district teams.
Seminar I: Facilitating a high performance learning community. This establishes the foundation of aligningcore beliefs with strategic structures and mission and vision of establishing distributed accountability. Along with these skills,candidates are taught to lead teacher teams in discussing school improvement. They begin by deciding what kinds of data are neededto depict a clear picture of the school’s present level of achievement, collecting the data, and finally planning activitiesfor school improvement. Some of the data is readily available from standardized methods of collection. The teams decide what otherdata is needed to examine school practices, what students are taught, how they are taught and what is expected of them. The teamanalyzes data and studies research about teaching methods that have proven successful for students. This provides an initial plan forschool improvement so they will have the skills needed to exercise the best practices of making data-driven decisions and building avision. At this point, training in technologyis infused to introduce integration of technology with teaching and learning, aswell as to assist with the establishment of a student’s electronic portfolio. After successfully completing the first seminar,participants receive their Teacher Leader endorsement from the Louisiana Department of Education. This is a new certificateendorsement awarded by the state.