I work at one of two middle schools in my district. Unfortunately, one of the middle schools
represents the higher income, newer homes in the area while the other represents the lower income,
older homes and apartments. I work in the later. We have often been told that expectations for our
students should not be as high as the other school. But, as a staff, we haven’t believed that. We
believe that we are here to help our students reach those higher expectations. Our principal has
lead us in this direction by insisting that In all of our decisions we put students in the middle. As a
result this past year, our scores multiple test were close if not higher than those of the other school.
We have been able to do this by having the belief that our students can meet the high expectations
we have set and we have put in supports to help them get there.
We have two main teams that help us do this. The first is our Instructional Leadership Team (ILT).
In our school district we have Instructional Leadership Teams (ILT) that were put in place with the
intent of having a organizational-wide source of power and influence that is seen in Model 2 of
distributed leadership described by Hilty in our reading. Our ILT members are department heads.
They are responsible for recommending leadership and activity budgets, school schedule, plans for
professional development days. Before these decisions are made they get input from the people
who have been assigned to them on our “communication tree”. Often our principal will go to them if
he needs help problem solving as well. We have found the this helped all staff feel like they have
influence without all of being in a room. In addition, ILT members facilitate training for their
departments.based on the training they received at district trainings. For the last two years it has
been centered around formative assessment and planning lessons backwards. By discussing these
in department groups members are able to get ideas from others and see things from other
perspectives as well as the support to try new things.
Our other team that is school-wide is our PBIS team. This one acts more like Model 3 of distributed
leadership which is a hybrid of Model 1 and Model 2. For the most part this team is made up of
people who are not on the ILT team. On this team each person signs up for a role or backups role
such as a facilitator, reporter, analyst, etc. By having backups we can ensure that we have people
who can step in as needed or if someone leaves there is someone to step in and takeover the job as
well as train others. Therefore, it is “providing some insurance that the functions would be
performed if there were turnover in personnel or if particular individuals failed to do their part”. (pg.
173) Additionally, it spreads the wealth making the jobs easier and by having a larger number of
teachers represented it is easier to sell our vision. This team also problem-solves how to make our
school more friendly and how to teach expected behaviors by our students. For example, we are
currently working on the following identified issues for Tier 2 students: What activities will be offered
to students when the weather turns bad? How do we make check in/checkout work more effectively?
How can we set up a check and connect? How can we provide mentoring? How can we re-teach
BEARS (Be Here, Excellent, Accepting, Respectful and Safe) behaviors? Additionally, we have
brought in experts to helps us as a staff work with those Tier 2 students. This is especially important
with the emphasis on restorative justice. During this trainings our PBIS team spreads out
throughout the room to not only influence others, but also to take notes of the private thoughts of
others so they can be addressed.
Resources
Hirsch, S., & Hord, S. (2010, August). Building hope, giving Affirmations: learning
communities that address social justice issues bring equity to the classroom. (4), 10-17.
Smylie, M. A., Conley, S., & Marks, H. M. (n.d.). Exploring new approaches to teacher
leadership for school improvement. In New Approaches to Teacher Leadership. (pp. 162-
188).
