Saskatchewan Rivers School Board trustees got a good look at what one school is doing to increase student achievement through instructional leadership.
The subject was discussed following a presentation from a John Diefenbaker School delegation at the board’s regular meeting on Monday. The delegation included Principal Jenna Cross, literacy support coach Danielle Poulin and Kristin Bates a literacy consultant.
The group made a presentation to the board on the journey their school has been on over the past few years to develop learning communities through in-school leadership.
“When school leaders are supported with good content, (and) professional development resources, they can go back and be creative with how they apply that information into their school context,” Superintendent Jennifer Hingley said.
The presentation was part of Hingley’s yearly School Learning Improvement Plan (LIP) update for the board with a focus on instructional leadership through school strategic planning.
Hingley said the leadership group has created some very clear learning targets for students and teaching targets for staff.
“The teachers really know what it is that they’re working on. What does the learning look like? They really provide regular ongoing support out of the classroom and in the classroom,” she said. “(It’s) just continually focusing, continually bringing it back to that goal, like being very goal oriented, but also recognizing how to work with people.”
Another key item for the success was the integration of Educational Associates (EAs) into the model. They incorporate the EAs into the embedded Professional Learning Community (PLC) days at the school
“They took a whole staff approach, so they brought their EAs, educational associates alongside of them as well,” Hingley said.
One goal is building collective efficacy (making sure everyone is heading in the same direction). Hingley said John Diefenbaker is seeing success in that.
“That’s what you see evidence of is teachers, leaders, teachers, coaches, and educational systems all working together to support the learning of students,” Hingley explained.
Hingley explained that each school has ‘Look For’ documents that identify what the school is working on.
“We provide the literacy learning model framework and then they decide what is the thing that they need to really work on,” Hingley explained.
“Because you’re using high impact learning strategies, we should see results in student learning.”
One example was improved outcomes for students in Middle Years, which can sometimes be a hard group to get to improve. For this the school focused on looking at what Grade 8 students could improve to prepare for high school.
“We heard the example of middle year students really, really being strongly evident in the reading scores of middle year students,” she said.
Each year as part of the LIP report Hingley brings a different school to present on their success for the board. She said that one reason John Diefenbaker was selected for this year was the leadership example.
“I use it every year,” Hingley said. “To have that school story, it was their decision to sort of highlight the pieces that they wanted to highlight.”
Each year along with the LIP presentation Trustees also get the Student Achievement Accountability Report.
michael.oleksyn@paherald.sk.ca
