Instructional Leadership

~ danielgallen

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I often tell school leaders that the holy grail of their leadership is instructional improvement at the classroom level.  While great classroom instruction is indisputably the defining element of a high performing school, focusing on instruction can be quite hard to do and doesn’t always get you a lot of leadership capital with external stakeholders.  It isn’t flashy.    Building a teacher’s repertoire of instructional strategies – mastering quality think-pair-shares, or socratic seminars, or nailing a strong opening to class each day – can be hard to see and systematically measure.  It’s the technical core of the profession, and yet teachers themselves sometimes struggle to articulate their go-to instructional moves.  People get excited when a school offers a new club, elective, or sports program.  Those are easy to describe and market.  There is much less fanfare when a teacher masters a new instructional strategy.

That’s why we’re launching the Instructional Leadership Cycle.  The idea is to create clear focus on our work as instructional leaders.  We want to protect space to ensure that instructional improvement is the main course on our menu of focus areas as instructional leaders.  Here are a few of the key components of the cycle:

Key Performance Indicators

     We call them KPIs for short.  Our KPIs tell us what is important in terms of improvement.  You can’t improve everything all at once, you have to focus, and the KPIs reflect the areas of focus over the course of the school year.  

     The KPI also refers to a moment in time – a formative assessment  – when we pause to measure our progress.  We engage in two formal KPI visits during the school year, when a district team visits schools to discuss progress and engage in problem solving protocols – we call them consultancies – that address Problems of Practice you are facing with regards to the implementation of your improvement agenda.  

    The Principal Summit

    The principal summit is the public face of instructional improvement for the school, and formally launches the cycle.  The view from the summit captures the school leader’s vision for his or her school, and lays out strategic improvement plans to address the focus areas outlined in the KPIs.  It is a prime opportunity to practice and refine how the school leader talks about the school and focused efforts to improve.  The summit is a high level overview – what is the school focused on improving, why has the school chosen those areas of improvement, and what is the plan to make it happen? 

   Instructional Leadership Meetings

     A monthly Instructional Leadership Meeting is designed to rigorously focus on enhancing the instructional leadership capacity of certificated administrators.  As we engage in the Instructional Leadership Cycle, this monthly meeting becomes the space where we learn together, build our collective capacity to lead, and diagnose implementation challenges.  The meetings are designed to be fun and engaging, providing participants with protected time to reflect on their leadership, plan future action, collaborate with colleagues, and celebrate successes together.  

   The KPI Visit

The KPI visit occurs twice during the school year.  The visit is facilitated by a KPI lead from our district office in partnership with the school principal.  The visits are designed to last approximately 2 hours at the site.  The primary components of the visit are as follows:

  • Self Reflection & Data Gathering – prior to the day of the visit, the Instructional Leadership Team (ILT) at the school completes a self-reflection and fill out the KPI data rubric.  For any quantitative measures, we provide a data dashboard where teams can access data.  At the request of the ILT, KPI leads can work with the team when questions arise with regards to the status of KPIs.
  • Data Review – the first 45 minutes of the visit are dedicated to a data chat using the KPI data rubric that has been completed by the ILT.  The team collaboratively reflects on areas strength and potential areas of improvement in terms of KPI progress. 
  • Consultancy Protocol – for the next 45 minutes, the team engages in a consultancy protocol designed to help the ILT think through a problem of practice related to their improvement work.  In general terms, the ILT shares a challenge they are facing, and the visiting team engages in a diagnostic brainstorming session to explore root causes and potential strategies to address the concerns.
  • Classroom Visits – for the final 30 minutes, the KPI team walks the campus and classrooms as an opportunity to learn more and interact more broadly with the school, and see firsthand the improvement work happening in classrooms.

     Instructional Rounds

     In a rounds visit, we take Problems of Practice to the classroom level.  Using a rigorous observation and discussion protocol, we have the opportunity to gain insight into what is happening across the school in terms of a specific area of instructional focus.  The visit not only builds up to recommendations based on actual classroom observations, but has the potential to build coherency and momentum around focus improvement areas.