Three of Ten Principles

Make Good Relationships with Teachers a Priority: As a leader, it is very important to have good relationships with the people you are working with. I am a relationship person and stress the importance of teachers having a positive relationship with students, so I have to model that in my relationships with teachers. Once that relationship is established, trust will be there and when it’s time to initiate change, you will have more people moving forward with you instead of setting you back.

Begin working with Teachers who are Interested, Curious, or Open to Change about a different way to teach math: Whenever I wanted to initiate change in my school, I would always start with the teachers who were interested and open to change. This way, you are not mandating the change and teachers are more open to take risks with support. Once these teachers are trained, begin implementing and most importantly see results, as they are communicating in their PLCs, their success will peek the interest of the others teachers and it basically becomes a domino effect of others that want to try something new.

Provide teachers with ongoing chances to meet with other teachers to be learners of mathematics and to reflect on their instruction: In my schools teachers either taught Math/Science or English/Social Studies on teams. I made the master schedule so teachers in the same grade teaching the same content had common planning time every day. One of those days had to be dedicated to content discussion, where teachers had the chance to discuss and reflect on their instruction within the classroom. They would often look at data and if one teacher’s kids were performing better on a certain concept than their kids, they were able to get suggestions on how to teach the concept so their kids could grasp as well. Teachers were very grateful to have this time built into the school day and were very productive with it.