John Parker

Capstone Portfolio Reflection Statement

Year Two
Building Upon Year One Success, Extending and Pushing Myself in Year Two

Providing Context for Year 2 Learning
In finishing year two work within the Leadership for Learning (L4L) program, two key learnings
permeated much of the work in which I engaged; communities of practice and assistance
relationships.

At the end of year one in L4L, my reflections and work articulated the need to change my
leadership practices to build capacity with principals to lead teaching and learning in their
building, and resolve how I contributed to a problem of practice by doing the work for others. I
knew these were growth areas and I felt good in the awareness of identifying the leadership
practices I had engaged in the past and how I could influence student learning more. In addition,
I experienced what I identified as a burden of carrying the load of the work and comparably, a
lack of building sponsorship with initiatives I introduced.

With the introduction of the research on Communities of Practice (COP) by Wenger, and the five
components of Assistance Relationships (AR) (Gallimore & Tharp, 1988), I was able to further
identify the void existing in my own leadership and used the components from the body of
research on each to build my own growth as a leader. More importantly, I wanted to identify
some key markers that might help me signify that I was both engaging in AR with other leaders,
and engaging in a practice as a participant rather than a bystander. I decided that a common tool I
would use would be exit slips from meetings and trainings that I led or participated in with other
central office administrators, trainings with administrators and teachers, and meetings with
building data processers, secretaries, and office managers. One marker I sought was the feedback
exchange when I engaged in a training to determine if my co-practitioners saw my role as a
trainer, support provider, or fellow practitioner. My intent was to be a fellow practitioner and
engage in the work alongside others rather than simply conducting professional development
myself. I also used email and phone calls as a data tool to note the type of questions
administrators, teachers, and support staff asked; and more importantly, how I responded to
support them and continue the learning together.

From my days as a teacher working collaboratively with other administrators and teachers, I
have long believed that many teachers have tremendous insights into effective instruction from
being on the job and learning together. When I read the following from Wenger's article on COP,
it re-activated this belief. He writes:

"For while the core is the center of expertise, radically new insights often arise at the boundary
between communities (of practice)....more generally, the knowledge that companies need is
usually already present in some form, and the best place to start is to foster the formation of
communities of practice that leverage the potential that already exists (Wenger, 1998, pp. 5, 6)".

During our April L4L weekend, the opening group conducted an activity which helped anchor
my thinking about COP and how AR could be used to engage in a practice with anyone else who
also wanted to take up the same practice. The tennis racket opener was such a 'practice', and this
experience catalyzed my understanding of the importance of focusing on joint work with
colleagues. An example of a community of practice occurred as I worked through my Cycle of
Inquiry (COI) project. Together as a school team, we worked toward the practice of improving
our use of student feedback and how instruction could be changed based upon that feedback.
Another instance was how I differentiated my approach with administrators when we learned to
use the application OneNote together and consider various student learning needs to understand
how to support different administrators using this tool for their Teacher Principal Evaluation
Project (TPEP) evaluations for the first time.

Throughout this reflection, I will provide evidence on how my leadership connected to the L4L
standards, how my superintendent internship expanded my understanding of and ability to lead in
a systems-level manner, and how most of my work tied to my personal goal of engaging with
administrators, teachers, and support staff in assistance relationships. In her comments on my
Year One capstone, Meredith Honig asked, "How can you more clearly articulate where you are
as a leader, and where are you heading?" My intent with this reflection is to describe my own
leadership as the result of two years of L4L work and quantify how I have built my leadership
using the experiences from evidence and artifacts. Explaining the trajectory of my leadership,
how I will get there and what benchmarks signify my arrival at this place remains somewhat
illusive to me. As an effective leader, I want to engage in all of these practices with greater
frequency with a clear focus on equitable supports for student learning in each instance. When I
consider Meredith's question further, I considered the effectiveness of a rubric from our new
WASA Leadership framework and how 'proficient' and 'distinguished' descriptors were created
in each of the eight categories. In many instances, those descriptors identified higher frequency
with the use of practices described herein. In reflecting on each of the four L4L standards, I will
also describe the frequency with which I engage in the practices associated with each standard.
However, I am excited to continue practicing COP and AR concepts next year, since these
concepts were new to me in year two. The leadership outcomes I have shown here demonstrate
the growth I seek as a leader; and I am encouraged how the leadership standards continue to
cause me to be purposeful and deliberate with teaching and learning efforts of others.

Strategic, Collaborative Governance & Decision-making
When I consider this set of L4L standards, some key leadership roles come to mind during the
2013-2014 year. I engaged with other administrators and teachers in some key policy work
related to high school transcripts, in bargaining with the secretaries for a new contract, in
establishing the new One-to-One student laptop pilot initiative, and in the role of President of a
non-profit organization for which I am affiliated. In each of the instances, I continually
considered the aspects of assistance relationship work and how I was involved as a practitioner
like the other participants. The challenge I experienced was how to engage in the practice while
still assuming a leadership role with the content of the work. In self-assessing my growth of each
of the six standards within this group, I improved and scored myself a '3'. This is primarily due to
the number of events, committees, and opportunities I immersed myself in; and how often I
produced artifacts from this work, thus increasing the frequency of practicing each standard.

I can understand and develop coherent organizational structures and policies that improve the
equity and overall performance of the educational system. Evidence of this includes the review
and change of policies related to retention of school records and developed internal changes to a
system that was out-of-date. This process streamlined processes for students to acquire their
official transcripts more quickly through our four high schools. I also reviewed transcript entries
for high school students who left early, and facilitated discussions with our Assistant
Superintendents around the use of W (withdraw) and how this can assist students with credit
deficiencies rather than hinder their acquisition of credits for graduation and future career plans.
Throughout these discussions, I considered the inequities which were raised between two of our
schools. In one comparison, one high school allowed a student to graduate given their total
credits while a student with a similar scenario was not allowed to graduate on time at another one
of our high schools. My significant leadership move in this situation was bringing awareness to
the discussion with other leaders in support of this standard.

I generate, allocate, and manage resources in alignment with improvement and equity goals. As
evidence, I brokered several conservations between our human resources department, Chief
Academic Officers, and building administrators about how to create a tool to streamline and
improve the effectiveness of teacher evaluations with the new evaluation system. In these
discussions, I made decisions to dedicate my technology staff to create this tool (brokering)
realizing the hours of work it might consume. However, I saw the potential at the onset of the
project and exit tickets provided at the end of the project indicate it was well-worth the time and
effort. Now our district has a tool which supports the evaluation work, but also a tool that is
being used for other teaching and learning conversations within our Professional Learning
Communities (PLC) and Response to Intervention (RTI) work. I also received feedback from our
human resources department, assistant superintendents, and building administrators on how
useful the tool is at unifying Danielson components and evaluation language, and how
administrators use the tool for post observation discussions. This feedback also served as
evidence to support my ongoing desire to engage effectively in assistance relationships.

I can identify, engage, and influence broader policy, legal, and political environments to
strengthen supports for learning. My evidence of changes to the high school transcript process
above further supports the work I have done with this standard. I identified, engaged, and
influenced changes to our policy on high school transcripts with other district leaders to create
district protocols to transcript credits more equitably among our high schools. Through this
process, I increase opportunities for students to take additional course work to support their
career pathway. My leadership move in this instance was to research new legislation that was
enacted and use this language to increase opportunities for students while complying with the
new laws.

Another leadership opportunity supporting this standard and many others was my election to the
presidency of the non-profit organization, Washington Science Teachers Association. I was
elected in May of 2013, and in this new role I directed the organization to identify new goals
associated with identifying and engaging in a supportive role with science teachers across
Washington State. From the goals we set in August of 2013, we provided professional learning
to science teachers across the state in all ten regions on the new Next Generation Science
Standards (NGSS) and how those new standards connect with the Common Core State Standards
(CCSS). From my district leadership perspective in Puyallup, I shared how we could support
Biology teachers across the state on providing training on the new Biology Collection of
Evidence (COE) requirements. By knowing the limited support the state would provide on the
Biology COE, I knew districts would need more COE support. By planning for state-wide
training on Biology COE, I leveraged the political environment with the need to support learning
at each district to create professional development opportunities.

I build the capacity of educators and community members to collaborate in ongoing
improvement systems to ensure high quality education for every student. In my new role as
Director of Instructional Leadership-Technology Integration, one of the oversights I had was
with our student data management system, eSchoolPLUS. This system holds all the student
information such as student demographic information, credits, grades, discipline, schedules, etc.
Throughout the school year, I decided to use this as a powerful collaboration tool between
teachers, parents, building office staff, and administrators. I realized just how important this
system was to all the other systems which calculate student grades, FTE, reports for CEDARS at
the state level, and generate schedules for teachers and students. Early in the year, I decided to
schedule meetings with each group so we could learn how this tool could impact the
effectiveness of our work and create greater efficacy. I wanted to increase communication
between parents and their teachers so they had a better understanding of what was transpiring in
the classroom and monitor their child's performance more closely. We sent notifications home to
parents so each knew they could access their child's attendance, discipline, and academic work
through Home Access Center (a feature of eSchoolPLUS). I set up online gradebook trainings
for teachers so they knew how to communicate standards-based grading options to parents and
their students.

Finally, I set up trainings for our eleven secondary schools to learn how to fully utilize the
scheduling component for their students based upon course requests the students provided. By
training each building administrator-data processor team, I wanted to increase 'the fit' between
student requests and the existing staffing available. In all of these opportunities, I constantly
considered how we, as a district, might ensure a high quality education for every student by
using eSchoolPLUS more effectively. At the end of the school year, most secondary schools
were at a '90% fit' approximately indicating a high degree of success the scheduling had on our
students. In hindsight, the impact this tool has on the organization made me consider other
comparable tools which had far-reaching impact to learning on students; and how I might
leverage those single tools as effectively as we had with eSchoolPLUS. This tool also allowed
me to assist principals to be instructional leaders by enabling them to have conversations with
their department leaders about a student-driven master schedule. To this end, I gained credibility
with the administrators and found myself growing significantly as we all engaged in the practice
of finding a high percentage fit with each of the eleven schedules.

I can develop and guide decision processes that maximize collaborative problem solving and
continuous improvement. Early in the year, I was asked to participate in district improvement
planning since our district improvement plan had expired. I had facilitated the development of
our first district improvement plan, and so I was open to hear how another might facilitate this
process and bring other district leaders to consensus on key problem solving areas such as
professional development, assessment tools and markers, and intervention strategies. This year, I
was tasked with finding methods to use assessment for intervention and monitor progress during
the year. From the growth I experienced from my COI work last year, I created a data protocol to
address our improvement needs and contributed the language for the new improvement plan.
More importantly, I engaged in the improvement work together with eight other central office
administrators with the intent on creating a plan which would be fully utilized beyond simply
complying with state requirements. During our sessions together, all participants brainstormed
ideas and brought their collective experience and expertise to the planning process. This
opportunity caused me to expand my understanding of maximizing collaborative problem
solving since we all arrived at consensus on what our next steps would be and what would be
entered within the district improvement plan. I had not experienced this type of work together as
a team up until this point, and I learned how collaboration can be done effectively amongst
leadership. When I facilitated the district's first improvement plan, I had followed the process
proscribed by the state, and this process yielded a plan which was seldom referenced or used. So
this new collaborative process caused me to grow as a leader in that I would find ways in which
the district improvement plan would be more fully accessed and utilized during teaching and
learning meetings at the district and building level. Moreover, I would use the plan to help
prioritize decisions about funding professional development opportunities, and thereby give the
plan greater credibility as a policy which guides district decision making with the budget.

The other evidence of how I guided decision process around collaborative problem solving was
with the previously mentioned policy revision with our process on high school transcripts.
Again, I was able to present scenarios to two of our Chief Academic Officers and Assistant
Superintendent in a way that allowed for a thorough exploration of the transcript process for our
students. The growth came in the leadership move of asking learning-focused questions to direct
the conversation toward solving the problem of common practices at each of our high schools. I
did not want to present a solution, rather, present scenarios that fostered collaborative
conversation toward a solution that all could support. Asking questions strategically) at the most
opportune time was challenging, but I got better at it throughout the process. Next year, I want to
dive deeper into engaging in assistance relationships by receiving some additional questioning
strategies, as I believe this will continue to represent a key strategic leadership move I can use in
all teaching and learning work. Furthermore, I realized that re-iterating the conversation
afterward was particularly helpful for each of us to accurately capture what was said and this is a
leadership move I continue to use in other post-meeting follow-ups.

I modeled transparent and ethical leadership and addressed some sources of conflict
productively and equitably. This year, I addressed an employee about their job performance,
attendance and punctuality, and adherence to district procedures. This resulted in a letter of
reprimand; however, I was transparent about the process with the employee and provided factual
evidence during the process, and was clear in my delivery of the consequences. Though not the
first time addressing this with an employee, I grew significantly from the process of sticking with
the data as the pivot point in the conversations rather than assumptions and speculations. This
proved to be very productive for me and have used this same process in other employee findings.

Another source of evidence with this standard involved working together collaboratively with
union representation on the frontend of technology issues associated with report cards, training
for staff, the teacher laptop initiative, and Smart Board installation. I knew each of these issues
may invoke a call to union representation, so I used a leadership move learned to get ahead of
issues by creating a communication plan to include all stakeholders. During this process, I shared
enough information with union leadership so they had the correct information in advance so they
could handle communication with union members appropriately. I made contact on several
occasions and shared the process with my supervisor enough that he started contacting the union
in advance of a pending project. I believe I modeled this process to address conflict productively
prior to event's occurrence.



The I mprovement of Teaching and Learning
In June of 2013, I moved into the position of Director of Instructional Leadership-Technology
Integration with a substantial amount of trepidation. I was concerned that taking a technology
position which was physically removed from the rest of the teaching and learning core team
would limit my ability to lead teaching and learning improvement initiatives. What I found in the
technology department was an opportunity to articulate a theory-based vision of deeply
engaging, culturally-responsive and intellectually challenging instruction and adult professional
development. The previous three years I engaged directly with teaching and learning through K-
12 math and science programs which I oversaw and had focused intently on standards, standards-
based instruction, and professional learning communities.

In technology, I began to create this vision by co-developing a five-year district technology plan
with the Executive Director of Technology which laid out technology initiatives focusing on
personalizing the learning of students, utilizing new methods and programs to provide parents
greater access to their children's performance, developing tools to support the work teachers did
to deliver instruction in their classrooms and support administrators to more effectively
implement TPEP. This plan took several weeks and included the involvement of the district
technology committee comprised of community members, teachers, students, building and
central office administrators. On the four occasions the committee met, we continually sought to
engage relevant players collaboratively and draw from school-based and community expertise
and resources in instructional improvement work. In one instance, we modeled the technology
we had in the district by collecting important feedback from all the committee members on what
the priorities should be for the Technology Levy scheduled in February 2014. A leadership move
I demonstrated was bringing this feedback data back to the committee in the form of various
actions steps within the plan, explicitly sharing the action steps came from their feedback.

The Five-Year District Technology plan included several steps to use technology to adapt
instructional visions and practices to appropriately support the specialized learning needs of our
students by piloting a program to provide greater online tools and learning opportunities through
a student, one-to-one laptop initiative in three schools. During this pilot, we provided new tools
to personalize their learning and connect with their teachers and other students through programs
utilizing social media. I worked directly with the administrator at one school to find ways to fully
utilize the laptops and help train teacher leaders at her school to use the technology to collect
formative student feedback and adjust instruction accordingly. I helped the administrator analyze
formative assessment practices and use formative assessment data from the Qwizdom software
and hardware, along with student survey data, and state assessment data to assist the principal in
the creation of a professional development plan to improve the instruction of 11 teachers at her
school for the 2014-2015 school year. Further supporting this standard, I collaborated with the
Executive Director of Assessment and Accountability and utilized a 'train-the-trainers' approach
to build the capacity of teacher leaders to train other teachers to use our student assessment
database in support of identifying student growth measures during goal setting.

I am also able to construct/adapt/select and use instructional frameworks and other leadership
tools to optimize student and adult professional learning. Early in the 2013-2014 school year,
our Human Resources department teamed up with our Educational Leadership Team and the
Technology Department to explore the creation of a new tool coupling the Danielson
Instructional Framework domains and components with the 8 new evaluation criteria from the
Teacher Principal Evaluation Project. I brokered resources to identify technology personnel who
could create this tool. Once we created the tool, we had our administrators test and implement
the tool from January to May. While use of this tool was optional, many of our administrators
chose to use this tool during their observations of teachers to script and code their lessons. While
we have adjustments to make, administrator feedback indicates the tool optimizes their time and
allowed them to have effective teaching and learning conversations with their teachers.

Another tool which supported this standard involved the training our administrators on the use of
Microsoft OneNote. I created a three-hour training which taught the basics of the application, but
also showed how the application could specifically optimize their work with the teachers they
supervise and evaluate throughout the year. Approximately 90% of our administrators elected to
take this optional training and several showed me how they constructed their OneNote notebooks
to help them eliminate the collection of binders and meeting agendas, and create new methods to
share pertinent district information with each other. As I stated in my introduction, my growth as
a leader would be measured by the frequency with which I engaged in work directly aligned to a
standard and the feedback I received. This is one area I would score myself very high based upon
these measures.

Finally, I have also fashioned and enacted systems to support and sustain instructional
leadership, inside and outside of schools. This has been done extensively through the
development of our student data management system eSchoolPLUS. This system, I found, is the
hub of our educational system. As a district, we rely heavily on the operation of this software
application to record all student demographic information, calculate FTE and provide various
reports to the state, create master schedules in all of our 31 schools, house all of our student
grades and transcripts and communicate with parents about their child's performance.

Throughout the year, I have allocated resources such as staff and budget to purchase upgrades,
train teachers, administrators, and other staff to successfully implement all the features of this
important and dynamic tool. Building capacity of all stakeholders, both within our schools and
within our parent community, is our primary objective and we have exit slips from many of these
meetings to demonstrate that we, as a district, were successful in distributing operational
knowledge of this complex software system to these stakeholders. This is particularly evident
since I learned we have over 10,000 parents use our online component of this system on a regular
basis. Since I have focused on this system extensively throughout the year with the number of
trainings and meetings, I believe I have improved my leadership associated with this standard
and the exit slips from these meetings and trainings reflect this capacity building, and an
appreciation for providing the ongoing support to do this work.

Equity and Excellence
My new technology director position opened several instances to practice and demonstrate the
equity and excellence standards with a high frequency of use. Work described earlier represents
examples where my leadership moves influenced or directed administrators, teachers and other
staff to use new guidelines or policies to improve the equity and excellence in our schools. These
instances include the high school credit and transcript policy, eSchoolPLUS training to build
master schedules in all of our 31 schools and Five-Year District Technology Plan. I will also
introduce my Cycle of Inquiry (COI) work here to show how I have facilitated explicit
discussions about race, class, language and ability.

This year, I took part in leadership discussions resulting in changing inequitable practices of
scheduling students, especially in secondary schools. Several meetings we had and discussions
with building principals helped identify how practices, policies, and systems, both presently and
historically, have created disparities in the quality of learning environments and student success,
particularly for traditionally marginalized students and change these practices. Specifically, I
helped administrators, counselors and data processors use our eSchoolPLUS system to change
practice by requesting all students to submit course requests, and build their master schedule
using tools within the system. This was also important to create student-driven master schedules
as opposed to schedules which previously catered more toward teacher course preference and
teacher expertise. This move opened up more course opportunities for all students especially,
especially those in special education and for many students who had been their scheduled
dictated by remediation classes. Since our secondary classes are standards-based and curriculum
aligns to Common Core standards this work also aligns with the standard on building policies
and systems that support every student in success and learning to high standards since we are
using this new master scheduling process to access more course opportunities where these
standards are taught.

I also oversee our Home Access Center (HAC) software which provides all of our parents, K-12,
the opportunity to see course work taught in classes and monitor the progress of their child
throughout the year. Through meetings, trainings and continual effort to have administrators and
teachers use this medium, my work increased online access and usage of this tool by parents over
20% this year. Building this system speaks directly to the two standards previously mentioned in
this domain.

Through the work with creating new guidelines on transcripts for high school credits, I grew in
my ability to foster the collective responsibility, growth and capacity of others to reflect on and
enact equitable practice; and engage and empower multiple voicesboth professional and
community in key deliberations and decision-making. Specifically, I brought key stakeholders
from our district together including our CAOs, Assistant Superintendents, some principals,
secondary data processors, and counselors to provide input on a standard each school would
uphold to enter credits for high school transcripts. I asked pertinent questions on behalf of all
parties to have an open and candid discussion to lead us towards a decision on crediting students
with courses on their high school transcript. By including a few students and parents who were
directly impacted by these decisions, I engaged our community on this process as well.

To define myself as a more proficient or distinguished leader, I strove to have all the standards
influence my work on a continual or more frequent basis. In support of this, I used the same
decision making process from high school transcripts to convened a district and community
stakeholders group to develop a Five-Year District Technology Plan. In order to give each
participant a voice, I used technology to gather input from all committee members and used this
input to drive decisions about the direction of the plan and how allocate funds from the
technology levy to support our plan. This collective work influenced voters since, I included this
within our voter information to our February election which passed with a 65% approval rating.

I facilitate explicit discussions about race, class, language, ability, and other group-based
disparities in the service of collective action to decrease them through my work using
PerformancePLUS (our student assessment database) and my COI project at Walker High
School.

Throughout the year, I used assessment data within our PerformancePLUS system to have
discussions about student achievement and focus explicitly on the achievement gap in our
district. Often, this conversation navigated through issues of ethnicity, student ability and
opportunity students had in our schools. During these discussions, I presented literature from
other districts demonstrating how they overcame issues of race and student ability to close the
achievement gap and increase opportunity for their students. By doing this, I specifically wanted
to make the possibilities visible and provide evidence to our groups that we can be successful at
increasing student achievement for all students.

During these conversations, I also led participants through discussions about barriers which
prevented us, as a district, from meeting the needs of all of our students. Exit slips from these
meetings indicated this work made a difference and that my leadership moves within these
meetings increased the awareness of participants to identify issues of race, poverty, student
ability and find ways to close the achievement gap at their school or directly in teacher
classrooms. To further support these participants, I am training a team of four administrative
interns to train other teachers and administrators in our district to use PerformancePLUS as a
primary data source for RTI discussions in buildings. The intent of this training is to use a data
protocol to specify achievement within our subgroups and discuss how instructional
interventions would positively impact achievement of students in these subgroups.

In my previous four years as a director of instructional leadership, we conducted meetings
together as a leadership team; however, I noticed directors working more in isolation beyond
those meetings. This year, I sought to follow up each meeting with 'Next Steps' for accountability
and this involved having follow-up conversations with directors and principals to include
subgroup data within their School Improvement Plans. Often this was an oversight for them, but
in a few instances, directors and building administrators did not know how to use Performance
Plus to mine for the student data they needed. This follow-up conversation served as an
accountability measure as well as an opportunity to provide professional development to
instructional leaders.

Walker High School's 130 students have unique backgrounds and challenges which we discussed
throughout the 2013-2014 school year as I conducted work on my COI project. Specifically, I
had several learning conversations with the principal there and influenced decision-making
around how we could use student voice and student feedback as strategies to influence academic
achievement of all of Walker's high school students. More specifically, many students at Walker
are from multi-racial backgrounds, on free and reduced lunch and would be generally classified
as 'at-risk'. I worked alongside the principal to develop an agenda for her staff to talk about
culturally responsive teaching and identifying a single instructional strategy which every teacher
would use and all students would receive during the 2014-2015 school year. From the feedback
and emails I received from Alicia in support of this work, my leadership made a difference for
her.

I nquiry-Focused Practice
From this year's COI work, I improved my abilities to lead from a teaching and learning stance
through an inquiry-focused approach by working directly with the principal at Walker High
School. I established an assistance relationship with the principal of Walker to use evidence to
understand problems of practice, and specifically the student, teaching/other adult, and
leadership dimensions of those problems. In fact, I spent all year on this COI and given the high
frequency of engaging in this work throughout the year, I improved my understanding of leading
by inquiry and developed the habit of mind of pinpointing the problem of practice in other
teaching and learning instances throughout the year. Specifically, the principal and I identified
problems of practice associated with using formative student feedback within each dimension,
and a tool to collect qualitative and quantitative data to revise our understanding of those
problems of practice.

In addition to using an inquiry approach at Walker, I identified problems of practice at the
various dimensions with both the TPEP Policy and Mount Morrison assignments during our
work in year two of L4L. In both of those instances, I used my experiences from my previous
two COIs and collaborated in teams to use qualitative and quantitative data to pinpoint problems
of practice more quickly, supporting my improvement on this standard from last year based upon
increased frequency of use.

In each instance where we identified and refined problems of practice, our teams constructed
theories of action based upon on a solid evidence-based rationale for how pursuing those actions
may shift adult practice and ultimately student learning. Showing a clear through-line from
changes in adult practice and other conditions to improvements in student learning in each
instance was important for me to identify and articulate; and by doing so, supported a higher
score on my self-reflection.

From the scores on my assignments as well as the authentic feedback from the Walker principal
as we developed a professional development plan and trained staff together, I acted in ways that
reflect engagement with the theory of action. I grew from these leadership moves and believe my
work continues to have a teaching and learning impact on the Walker teachers and students. By
collecting student feedback during lessons throughout the year using tools principal and I
created, I impacted the staff's ability to collect qualitative and quantitative data to continuously
assessing progress during the school year.

I supported the learning of other adults to continuously strengthen their practice in ways that
promise to improve results for all students by conducting formative assessment training for
teachers. In addition to that move, I cited research-based practices in formative assessment to
influence the principal to include collegial classroom visits in next year's professional
development plan. By co-creating a survey for Walker students, I helped the principal and
teachers learn how to use a survey feature of their new school website to collect data from
students about perceptions they have on their teacher's practice and how it impacts their
individual learning needs.

Another demonstration of supporting the learning of others occurred in my four trainings I
provided administrators to learn OneNote as an organizational tool and incorporate that
application to help administrators with their TPEP evaluations. Key to this work was the
community of practice that developed throughout the year among the administrators to find
additional ways to incorporate OneNote into staff trainings and RTI work at the building level. I
played a key role in disseminating information from other administrators when they shared new
ideas and typically modeled one administrator's idea to another. I really enjoyed sharing other
practitioner's ideas through a variety of mediums, and exit slip feedback from administrators
indicated they appreciated this support and requested additional trainings to learn about other
ways principals are using OneNote in their school.

From this administrator feedback and feedback from exit slips, I engage in multiple ways that
help other adults deepen the extent to which they are engaged with and value strengthening their
practice. This was also evident when I presented my year one CIA at the Washington Evaluation
and Research Association's December conference to a full room of practitioners who wanted to
find new ways to prepare for TPEP and support the learning of others. From the 38 exit slips,
most indicated they found the ideas I presented 'very helpful' and articulated a means by which to
try Cycles of Inquiry back in their home district with their staff. For this reason, I feel confident
in claiming that I helped other adults deepen the extent to which they value their own practice. In
fact, I remain in contact with several participants through email from that presentation.

Outcomes Resulting from My Leadership
TPEP is a teaching and learning initiative for which I am very involved. This year all of our
administrators were impacted at some level by observing teacher lessons, scripting and coding,
and rating based upon evidence. Through this common initiative, leaders in our district have
often discussed the improvement they have seen in teaching and learning in each classroom for
every student. One outcome from my leadership was the development of a tool to help
administrators do this work. Since language within each of the state's eight criteria and the
Danielson framework address specific teacher practices which every teacher should possess,
every student is impacted. Now, I engage in the 'Practice of evaluation', along with my
'Administrative community'. Together, we seek to improve our practice of using evaluation to
influence the teachers we supervise and improve student achievement in the process. Without my
assistance to provide administrator professional development or trouble-shoot the evaluation
tool, the evaluation process would become fragmented and lack a cohesive direction which all
the practitioners could follow.

Moreover, my claims and evidence shows the impact I have through assistance relationships.
Prior to the L4L program, I saw myself as responsible for theories of action without identifying
and pinpointing the problems of practice for which my actions were supposedly addressing. I
also felt like I carried the burden identifying the training and at odds with administrators when
they did not sponsor and support teaching and learning work with teachers in their building.
Armed with the research and some new experience of purposefully engaging in assistance
relationships with our building administrators, I have changed my approach and my role based
upon the five AR components. In short, it has been liberating. My colleagues are identifying the
teaching and learning work in the context of their buildings, and I am assisting them in the
process as a district administrator by developing tools with them to support their work, engaging
in work with them, brokering the technology resources to support evaluation, differentiating
training to meet their needs and modeling how these tools can be used to optimize the work
teachers do and the learning that happens for all students.

Next Year's Goals and Learning Supports
Last year through my COI work, I gained significant awareness of how my leadership moves
contributed to the problems of practice. I saw my leadership efforts as teaching and learning
focused, yet they were necessarily the work administrators were doing or needing support on
within their building. This year, I began shifting my intent to provide support by listening as our
administrators defined their work in their buildings, asked more questions about the types of
support I might provide, and be more purposeful to become a learning-focused practitioner with
my colleagues. When I learned about assistance relationships, and began using that body of
research with the Walker principal through this year's COI. Our collaboration around formative
assessment feedback, the steps we took together with the theory of action, and general sense of
coming alongside the principal was invigorating. Moreover, we continue to plan for next year
and work together on other technology initiatives. This has caused me to pause and ask, "How
can I engage in this type of work with other administrators and provide support to them through
assistance relationships?" This will be the focus of next year's work.

The first goal will be to make assistance relationships more visible to others around me. When I
shared this year's COI with a chief academic officer, he indicated he really connected to this
approach and wanted to learn more. Therefore, I plan to build a culture of using assistance
relationships by modeling the five pillars of assistance relationships in all aspects of the work I
do and make my leadership moves visible to others at the same time. More specifically, I want to
model assistance relationship to those who evaluate principals.

Initially, I plan to list the AR pillars in agendas and tie them to the learning targets and goals for
each meeting and professional development. I plan to meet with building administrators three
times each next year and look for opportunities to engage in AR work with each of them in their
teaching and learning context. I also plan to create a new reflection tool for myself to record
instances of how I supported those administrators each week. I want to be able to provide
evidence to myself through these reflections that I evaluate the extent to which it deepens the
leadership of others.

I also want to push my colleagues to strive for accountability in themselves and those they
supervise, just as I do in myself. By challenging and pushing our administrators, I create
opportunities for our leaders to stretch and grow while creating the opportunities to provide the
support for them to be effective instructional leaders. I am looking forward to year three to refine
my leadership in this area.





References

Gallimore, R., & Tharp, R. G. (1988). Rousing minds to life: teaching, learning, and schooling in
social context. Cambridge [Cambridgeshire] ; New York: Cambridge Cambridgeshire ;
New York : Cambridge University Press.
Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of practice : learning, meaning, and identity. Cambridge, U.K.;
New York, N.Y.: Cambridge, U.K. ; New York, N.Y. : Cambridge University Press.