Leadership
Organize and run new staff onboarding and returning staff orientation
Design and implement the school's first formal exit interview process (see below)
Create and Facilitate workshops on Backward Design and cultural sensitivity and collaboration to strengthen lines of communication between foreign and Chinese staff (see below)
Conduct interviews for potential staff members in primary school
Develop PLCs amongst teachers in order to strengthen teaching quality and collaboration
Mentor new teachers on procedures, and oversee mentor program to ensure new teachers are onboarded properly
Improve teaching quality by establishing self-sustaining observation and PD cycles (see below)
Aide teachers in reviewing and formulating classroom management plans built around restorative justice (see below)
Backward Design
The images represent a few slides from my workshop on Backward Design that I delivered to grade and subject leaders for professional development. My goal was to simplify BD to its core elements and provide ample time for teachers to collaborate on reworking their PBA (Project Based Assessments) to align with the BD model.
On our campus, all our teachers are familiar with the BD model, but the amount of time given to actually implementing it collaboratively has not been provided. Further confounding factors (Covid leading to higher than normal attrition) has necessitated that PD energy be directed towards teaching quality and less towards the strength of the curriculum. This workshop was the first amongst a string of efforts to workshop together to address lingering curricular issues.
Backward Design
(Please scroll to the bottom to see my own PBA mapped out using BD.)
Cultural Collaboration
The images represent a few slides from my workshop on cultural collaboration delivered to new staff during orientation. The themes are oriented towards building collaboration and harmony amongst folks of different cultures.
On our campus, Chinese and foreign staff work in consort to accomplish many similar goals, including those related to student learning outcomes. Such situations give rise to multiple opportunities for miscommunication. Our goal is to preempt these situations.
Exit Interviews
The images represent a brief rundown of the process I established for our HR team to use during exit interviews. Prior to this, there was no extant format for collecting data on staff satisfaction or for aiding in the exit interview process.
This document enabled us to collect meaningful data that informed phenomena surrounding staff retention and attrition as well as general satisfaction. There was and remains tremendous cultural hurdles surrounding the implementation and use of the data collection instrument, but it has nonetheless been used.
Restorative Justice
To the left are a few slides that were part of a workshop I ran that helped teachers to understand and create restorative justice classroom management systems in the classrooms.
The presentation incorporated a number of relevant academic texts to align results with research. In the end, teachers should have a reassessed or reinvigorated classroom management system that uses best practices that combines student agency, respect, and high expectations.
Professional Learning
In an effort to join forces with the Instructional Coach on our campus, I created a professional learning gameplan. The action plan outlines a basic process for using learning walks and observations to inform team members' professional learning needs.
The plan is conversational in nature and has been used to tailor various professional development sessions, including backwards design, restorative justice classroom management, readiness and preparedness routines, and it has even helped in forming PLCs amongst teaching staff.
Backward Design
The images to the left sample on of my own project units worked through the Backward Design model.
Given the model's emphasis on multiple lines of alignment, my focus was to find where the standards, key understandings, and essential questions align first, and then move on from there.
You can some projects I have used the BD framework on in the "Lesson Portfolio" of my website.