Franklin Crowder
Educator/Aspiring Administrator
ADMINISTRATIVE LEADERSHIP
Every school community has a unique mission, vision, and core values that are fixed in its history, present needs, and future goals. Similarly, every building leader is also different in their leadership style and theory. My experiences in the internship process allowed for opportunities to discover my inherent leadership style, build upon it through experiences and skill development, and learn how to reflect and improve it while taking on leadership roles. Specifically, the following experiences that I partcipated in helped to practice effective communication skills, collaboration, and highlight my skills as an effective leader.
DISTRICT LEADERSHIP & CURRICULUM SUPERVISOR
The school district that I conducted my internship hours is rather small and located in a largely rural portion of Virginia. Because of this, our leadership team consisted of district and building administrators, our school social worker, school psychologist, test coordinator/guidance counselor, ITRT, TITLE I staff, and teacher representatives. Our goals were to dissegregate data from benchmark and SOL Testing and understand what procedures would be advantageous to ensure ALL students are successful. We meet monthly to develop and promote the school and district's mission, plan and carry out the district goals by setting up timelines and accountability measures, and review and revise the school vision through collaborative discussions and decision-making. These measures are all done through careful reflection using federal and Virginia Department of Education mandates, community surveys, student assessment and behavioral data, staff input, and continuous focus on building/district goals. Also, this team strives for effective communication with all stakeholders concerning this process. These representatives include: state/federal representatives, district/building staff, community, parents, students, and school board members. Some important skills I have developed through the District Leadership Team over the years are:
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Positive and healthy discourse can be extremely valuable and is a result of careful and planned meeting expectations that are agreed upon and carried out at every gathering.
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Planning using effective procedures and actions are a result of clear and concise expectations (what is to happen, when, where, by whom, etc).
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Student success must be in the forefront of this process. When this occurs, many of the once thought of "problems" may minimalize.
Some future ideas that I might consider include:
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Using technology to disseminate information: I feel that our district does well with communicating information throughout the county. However, there are many parents in our community that have transportation problems and cannot find the means to appear in such meetings. What I would like to potentially implement is a platform where parents can log in from their device (computer, Ipad, phone, etc.) to receive this information and have a chat board where they can take value in their feedback (much like Facebook Live). This may help in generating ownership in this process and help them gain a better understanding of this process.
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Record Keeping: In these meetings, we take a lot of notes. Great ideas come form these meetings; however, I feel that they could be recorded in a way that could easily referred to in the future. Therefore, I would like to see these minutes shared on the school/district website. In addition, I feel that this would also help in the community being informed of the decisions in the school district.
SCHOOL SAFETY: THREAT ASSESSMENT TEAM
Sutherland Elementary has recently constructed a Threat Assessment Team as requested by the Virginia Department of Education. The purpose of our team is to implement assessment, intervention, and action policies such as recognition of threatening behaviors and threat reporting mechanisms. Our team is also required to establish relationships with local and state law enforcement and mental health agencies to assist in assessment and intervention. I have learned that this team must have selected personnel such as a Resource Officer, Guidance Counselor, Social Worker, and other kep officials trained to diffuse specific threatening situations.should be one part of a larger campus protection system. Still, when done right, threat assessments can be an extremely powerful tool to protect your campus because, despite popular opinion, there is no reliable profile of student attackers.
ADMINISTRATIVE DESIGNEE: SUTHERLAND ELEMENTARY SCHOOL
IDCPS LEADERSHIP: PHYSICAL EDUCATION
Dinwiddie County Public Schools hosts its annual iDCPS Division Conference for faculty and staff before the start of the school year. The purpose of the conference is to bring the county’s educational professionals together to collaborate and to develop knowledge and skills necessary to achieve their professional goals and support academic achievement. As a leader, I corresponded with the Elementary Curriculum Supervisor to meet with all Physical Education teachers councerning information changes made by the Virginia Department of Education and holding a forum concerning how these changes can be implemented within our populations.
BEFORE SCHOOL REMEDIATION
Sutherland Elementary School is very committed to the success of all students. One program that was started included Before School Remediation for 3rd, 4th, and 5th Grade students. This program was conducted every Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday from 7:20 - 8:20 am. Several teachers would come in early with the students to review Reading and Math concepts that would be seen on the Virginia Standards of Learning tests. Scheduling, attendance, overseeing technology, and discipline were all aspects that I was responsible for. I feel that this program was successful, but I think that students felt a little burned out as this created a long day for them. Also, some students were also in our After School Remediation program, which makes for an even longer day as this program was conducted on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 3:45 - 4:45 p.m. I do not feel that students need to be in both programs at the same time. Therefore, this should be noted in future years and exercised accordingly.
BUS DISCIPLINE
With the guidance of my building administrators, I have had the opportunity to sit on several discipline scenarios concerning pupil transportation. During these times, I have had the chance to listen in on several points of view concerning students and actually piecing together the "whole story" based on the consistency of these interpretations. I like how thorough we were in terms of finding key information concerning the solutions that work with our population in terms of discpline. However, I feel that the overall time that was used to get this information took away from the student's time on task in the classroom and could be cut down by receiving individual accounts of situations instead of calling in a group of students and having them wait in the office until it is time to conference with administration.
SCHOOL SAFETY: CRISIS MANAGEMENT TEAM
For the past several years, I have had the opportunity to serve on Sutherland Elementary School's Crisis Management and Threat Assessment Teams. Crisis Management is a central component of comprehensive School Safety. The most important consideration in both Crisis Management is the health, safety and welfare of the students and staff. An important component of the Plan is a set of interagency agreements with various county agencies to aid timely communication and help coordinate services between the agencies and individual schools or the entire school division. I have learned that this is very important for a school division’s approach to school safety which focuses more narrowly on a time-limited, problem-focused intervention to identify, confront and resolve the crisis, restore a safe climate, and support appropriate adaptive responses.
I have had the privlidge of representing Sutherland Elementary School as their Administrative Designee. In this role, I was called upon to act as an administrator when the administrative team was out of the building. Some of the duties that I found myself covering included classroom discipline issues, building matinence decisions, and overseeing daily operations in an administrative capacity. This experience reaaly makes me understand the complexity of how the school operates on a daily basis.