Standard 4.2 Professional Development: Candidates plan for ongoing professional growth.

“It is better to lead from behind and to put others in front, especially when you celebrate victory when nice things occur. You take the front line when there is danger. Then people will appreciate your leadership,” -Nelson Mandela. Throughout my life, the people with the greatest influence on my have been the ones who helped me overcome challenges and let me shine when I succeeded without asking for acknowledgment. My goal is to be that type of leader within my school. For my professional development leadership plan, I wanted to build on my strengths as an educator. As I created my leadership plan, I successfully set a goal for my first two years as a school librarian. The goal I set for myself is to provide teachers with collaborative lesson ideas and access to a variety of quality resources to effectively plan instruction. Reflecting on my strengths and weaknesses as an educator helps me plan for my ongoing professional growth so that I can be a valuable educator at my school.

I used The Leadership Practices Inventory (LPI) and Collaborative Leadership Qualities Inventory (CLQI) to identify my leadership strengths. I scored the highest in the area of enabling others to act. Within the school community I encourage and enjoy collaborating with my teammates and setting goals. My principal described me as a “quiet energy” because I go the extra mile to get anything done for my students and co-workers. The leadership inventory also identified that I need to work on inspiring a shared vision within my school community. Often I am a quiet member of the group. I am not an assertive person and often try to find the direction that will please most people. I realize that in education I must be the advocate for my students! I have been working on speaking up when I feel passionate about decisions regarding best educational practices. As a school librarian, I need to advocate the importance of collaborating and using the educational materials available. To do this, I will need to continue to develop and build upon my strengths as an educational leader. By taking the leadership inventories I had the opportunity to discover my potential as a leader.

As aforementioned, I continue to work on my assertiveness. This skill will be important once I move into the library profession and seek to invite teachers in to collaborate with me. The school library is a gathering place of wonderful resources that often go untapped by teachers because they do not have the luxury of time to come in and browse. My first objective is to provide opportunities for professional development for classroom teachers to explore available resources in the media center. In order to meet my objective as stated in my leadership action plan, I intend to develop a professional development sharing session to be offered twice a quarter. During this sharing session, I will put together pathfinders based on the unit of study to show a variety of resources available to promote student learning and address learning needs. In order to ensure that my sharing sessions are valuable, I will need to attend community and department meetings and listen to what teachers are working on. I will also access professional journals such as School Library Journal, Booklist and Curriculum Connections to create a list of materials that relate to upcoming curricular topics. In order to evaluate the effectiveness of my sharing sessions, I will look at circulation data to see if the recommended materials are being checked out. Through developing sharing sessions I will be able to work towards meeting the goal of my leadership action plan in order to present collaboration opportunity with teachers.

Sharing new resources that are available and promoting how they can be used in the classroom opens the door to collaborative activities. For my second objective of my leadership action plan, I will actively encourage collaborative planning with classroom teachers. I will access professional journals such as Library Media Connections to come up with relevant lesson ideas in order to meet my objective. I will also need to advocate the school librarian’s role as collaborative partner. Placing notice slips in mailboxes can inform teachers of resources I have available to help them meet their content standards. E-mailing will also be an essential tool for communicating with teachers. Using my curriculum chart that I created during my SLM program, I can track the units teachers will be diving into next.

So often educators get bogged down by the little things and fail to see the big picture. I want to encourage others to support one another within the school community by leading by example. I plan to be the school librarian who helps them create inquiry driven lessons while standing in the wings to watch the students succeed. To gain the trust of my co-workers, I will step up and frontload the problems until they are resolved. Promoting educational resources and advocating for collaboration is just the start of my plan for professional growth as an educator. 

Artifact

Leadership Analysis and Action Plan