Artifacts+of+Administrator+Standards

=Artifacts to Evidence Knowledge & Skills of Administrator Standards =

Here is a link to my Internship Time Log. This time log is a great artifact that illustrates how I used my internship hours to gain experience in all of the seven administrative standards listed below and the various administrative objectives developed from the standards with my internship supervisor. During my internship, I participated in two different observations of certified staff members. During one of the observations, I completed a full observation cycle (pre, observation, and post) with my building principal. I was able to observe his observation techniques as well as make my own observations and comments. The other observation I completed was an unannounced observation of a certified staff member that I did on my own. This staff member asked for my peer feedback to help her professional growth and as part of her promotion artifacts she would be submitting to the district later in the school year. Both observations gave me insight into how much time observations can take, how to use the My Learning Plan software from an administrator aspect, and practice in completing observations in a variety of content areas.
 * ** Wisconsin Administrator Standard ** || ** Demonstration of Standard: Artifact or Narrative Response ** ||
 * **Standard 1:** The Administrator has an understanding of and demonstrates competence in the teacher standards || **1) Staff Observations **

This year I was selected through a vote by my staff members to be a member of the Promotion Review Committee for some staff members up for promotion in the district this school year. Here is a description of what the Promotion Review Committee does: || For the 2013-2014 school year, I am the Facilitator for the Building Leadership Team. It is my job to send out an agenda to all members, make sure representation from each team in the school is at the meeting, make sure things run smoothly, introduce and conclude each topic on the agenda, and confirm future meeting times for the committee. During a BLT meeting, school-wide topics are discussed that need decision making or would impact the school as a whole. Example topics may include: school budget, WKCE testing, school attendance to music performances, field trips, staff assignments for future school year, etc.
 * 2) Part of Promotion Review Committee **
 * **Standard 2:** The Administrator leads by facilitating the development, articulation, implementation, and stewardship of a vision of learning that is shared and supported by the school community. || **1) BLT Team Facilitator - Minutes/Notes**

This research paper allowed me to practice my research, data collection, and analysis skills while implementing a key element of my leadership philosophy, community building, into a school. This paper helped me develop a larger vision I had for the school and the impact I hoped to achieve in relating goal attainment to community building.
 * 2 ****) Research Paper - Goal Attainment with Community Building **

**3) Learning Packet** This packet was an assignment I completed during Masters Degree coursework. This document highlights key elements and pieces of literature that made impact on my learning through the Educational Leadership Program. Some of the artifacts in this document are readings I did in a class, activities I did that made a large impact on my leadership philosophy, and case studies I analyzed that helped develop my leadership and administrative thinking. || Over the summer, I was able to participate on two different interview committees. One of the committees was for a certified staff member in Catalyst teaching eighth grade. This interview cycle happened pretty late in the summer as a previous teacher got a different job in his home town. We conducted five interview for this positive, even one through Skype as a qualified application (and current hire) was on vacation in Hawaii at the time of interviews. The other interview was for a special education aid position for a one-on-one position with a student. Both interview processes showed me how difficult and time consuming the whole process can take. It was important for the committee to discuss and debate positives and negatives of each candidate after the interview to get all of our ideas out on the table. One other key strategy we used was to rank each candidate in numerical order on different categories such as experience, knowledge, fit into school environment, etc.
 * **Standard 3:** The Administrator manages by advocating, nurturing, and sustaining a school culture and instructional program conducive to pupil learning and staff professional growth. || **1) Interview Team Member **

**2) Scheduling** A large portion of my summer internship hours was spent working on and creating the master schedule for the 2013-2014 school year. I worked a lot on developing the staff schedule displayed in the first picture below. The building principal and I spent a lot of time reviewing teacher requests, trying out different scheduling options, looking at class sizes, and analyzing impacts that would happen to the schedule with each change in a core or elective area.



The second image shows Infinite Campus, which was used to run course reports, create individual student schedules, create sections per class for each teacher, add course requests, etc. I continued to use Infinite Campus to work on scheduling topics throughout the school year in making schedule changes, analyzing class size numbers, and adjusting co-teachers on course assignments for staff. I also used Infinite Campus to create ad hoc reports for district meetings and Department of Public Instruction mandatory reports. I truly enjoyed the scheduling process and have already begun to brainstorm ideas, options, and alternatives to creating next year's schedule with the building principal.




 * 3) Plan & Implement MAP Testing for Catalyst Charter Middle School **

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">One of my main leadership roles in Charter Middle School is to plan, implement, and analyze our MAP testing which done twice a year in the fall and spring. As a charter school, we are required to assess our students with a national standardized test to get grant funding. This is the second year that I have held this leadership responsibility. A lot of time and planning goes into making sure all accommodations are made and accounted for with each special education and ELL student, testing set up is done, assessment proctoring is done correctly, and submitting information to NWEA both before and after testing. This document shows one day's plan for implement MAP testing in our school. || <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; line-height: 1.5;">With my building principal, I worked on two different budget projects. The first project I worked on (and continue to do so) is the Catalyst Charter Middle School 2013-2014 budget. The budget for this school is $225,000 through the charter school grant. This budget constantly needs to be adjusted and updated with new purchases, conference registrations, amenities from staff when conferences are attended, etc. I have learned how to code the different categories, what belongs in each section, and how to estimate how much will be used the rest of the year based on previous spending.
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">**Standard 4:** The Administrator ensures management of the organization, operations, finances and resources for a safe, efficient, and effective learning environment. || <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; line-height: 1.5;">**1) School Budget**



The other budget project I worked on was to help my building principal develop different options in how the Building Leadership Team could make decisions for the 2014-2015 school year. Currently, staff submits proposals for different things he/she needs and how much it will cost. If there is money available and fits academic needs of students it typically gets approved. Our principal wants to look at other options in how to determine the distribution of our building budget. One option I helped him create and analyze can be viewed in this document: 2014 - 2015 Budget Planning Options. This option involves analyzing how many students each teacher sees in a two day cycle since we run a black/orange day schedule for elective classes. A dollar amount would be determined for each student a teacher sees and that amount would be multiplied by the number of students each teacher works with in the two days. This would equal the budget each teacher would get and have the option to use. I do not think this is the absolute best option for the budget as different classes and materials cost different amounts, but the BLT committee wanted an option that was pretty straight forward in analyzing the numbers. The BLT committee is still in discussion on which option to use or how to create a hybrid of a couple options.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; line-height: 1.5;">For two days, I was the Administrative Designee in the my middle school building. The principal and school counselor were both out of town at conferences so I was the administrator in place of them. I have to say this was the best experience I could have asked for in my internship training. During the two days I dealt with a large variety of topics including: a lockdown drill, parent meetings, student issues of stealing, threats, bullying, etc inappropriate use of devices, home/school issues, phone calls to parents, and participated with our School Resources Officer on a meeting with a specific student. I was still able to contact my principal for advice on how to handle difficult situations, but being the first one to respond to an issue or deal with a topic made the job very real to me. I was surprised how calm the majority of the first day was and then everything started to happen at once toward the end of the day. The second day was a whirlwind the whole time with dealing with different issues left and right. I really enjoyed the ability to problem solve, work with students, communicate with parents, and inform or work with staff about various things going on.
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">2) Administrative Designee **

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; line-height: 1.5;">During the fall volleyball season, I supervised every home game. This gave me the opportunity to interact with students and parents in a different setting than in the classroom or over the phone. I truly enjoyed being able to watch my students in a different environment, support them in their extra curricular activities, and build relationships above and beyond what I had before. The boys in school heard that I was at all of the home volleyball games, which then led to them asking me to attend their basketball games. By putting forth the effort to either work at the games or just attend to show support, I saw the extreme value in building relationships outside of school hours. As a principal I think this is a key element to building a great sense on community in a school. || As a teacher in Catalyst Charter Middle School, I am member of the Sustainability Committee. Our committee is focused on how to sustain ourselves after our grant money and cycle runs out at the end of the 2013-2014 school year. A lot of programs and elements we do in Catalyst cost additional funds, so our purpose is to find ways to raise money, make connections with local business and experts, figure what we can and cannot live without, etc. Our committee meets once a month. The link above shows the meeting minutes/communication that is sent out to all Catalyst teachers and Governance Board Members after each meeting.
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; line-height: 1.5;">3) Supervise Volleyball Games **
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">**Standard 5:** The Administrator models collaborating with families and community members, responding to diverse community interests and needs, and mobilizing community resources. || **<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">1) Catalyst Sustainability Team Member **

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">**2) Standards-Based Grading** <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">One element that I communicated with parents about a lot about was standards-based grading. This document illustrates many of they key points I may make to parents or explanations on how to find specific information about their child's standards-based scores. This is a newer topic to many parents and is something that needs to be explained clearly and often. || <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">During my internship, I spent a lot of time working on student discipline with the building principal and school counselor. The link above provides an image to our behavior referral forms used in school when there is a student issue. The bus company also has a different type of referral form that can be submitted to the school about issues that occur on the bus. I would often take either type of these referral forms and investigate the issue by talking to the students involved and witnesses to get to the bottom of the issue. This often involved interviewing several students, making conclusions from information and evidence provided on my own or in consultation with the principal or counselor. A consequence would be determined if needed, a final conference would happen with the student(s) involved, and communication home would happen that day.
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">**Standard 6:** The Administrator acts with integrity, fairness, and in an ethical manner. || **<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">1) Blank Referral Form - Student Discipline **

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; line-height: 1.5;">During the course EdL 735 - Legal Aspects in Education, I learned a large amount about legal issues that come in schools, how they were handled, how they maybe should have been handled, and what schools need to do to protect themselves/respond to legal issues that arise. This research paper examined the involvement of religion in public schools through the incorporation of religious motivational speakers during the school day to see if this act violated the First and Fourteenth Amendment rights of students. This class was very interesting and engaging to me as it was not something I knew a whole lot about prior to taking the class and it is a very relevant topic that administrators and schools need to know how to handle. || <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">As part of my internship, I attended various school board meetings to observe the relationship and communication between the principals, superintendent, and school board members. It was interesting to see how decisions were brought up, discussed, and finalized by the school board. I did not see a lot of action happen at the open session of the school board meetings, but observed more of the discussions or debate of different topics.
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">2) Research Paper - Legal Issues in Education **
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">**Standard 7:** The Administrator understands, responds to, and interacts with the larger political, social, economic, legal, and cultural context that affects schooling. || <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">**1)** **School Board Meeting Minutes**

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">**2) Job Shadow with High School and Elementary School Principals** <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; line-height: 1.5;">In our district, each teacher gets one personal learning day each school year. I was able to use mine this fall to job shadow a high school principal and an elementary school principal in our district for a half a day each. This allowed me to see first hand what a typical day as a principal would like that at each level. I was able to ask questions about their leadership philosophies, behavior management, scheduling, curriculum, etc. and compare it to what I had experienced in working with my building principal and learned through my coursework. Additionally, it helped me to build relationships with the other two principals and foster more community between their schools and mine as we were able to share ideas on how we do our observations of teachers, use our advisory time, etc. ||