As an itinerant teacher, I am able to see teacher leadership in six elementary schools. One positive example of teacher leadership is found at my home school which is the only school in my district that scored proficient for this year’s cycle. This school year, the Leader in Me program was implemented, which promotes awareness of leadership potential in all students.
Two teachers, second grade teacher Lea Ann Hammons, and fourth grade teacher Beverly Hensley, used a data notebook tool prior to the “Leader in Me” implementation. Now all faculty members are using these data notebooks as part of the Leader in Me program.. There are three sections in the notebook. One section is for data (test scores), the second is a "brag" section where the student places the work they have chosen, and the third section is where their goals are located. The students and parents are able to track progress and set goals, and it gives an awareness of their status. The data notebook enables the students and parents to talk about ways to improve or enhance their learning.
Lea Ann Hammons designed the data page for the notebook. MAP scores of each content area are given a data page that is broken into Fall, Winter, and Spring sections. The student’s score is placed on this page and the student then writes their reflection on what they would like to improve or work on to raise their score. With the intermediate grades, there is a section for the student to self-reflect on what content areas they feel they are the strongest in and in what content areas they need to improve. These are reflected upon and edited every 9 weeks.
In the intermediate grades (3-6), the students conference with parents using the data notebooks. The teacher’s role in the conference is to be there as a resource while the student leads the conference in explaining the data notebook to their parents. In the lower elementary grades (K-2) the teachers lead the conference with the student's input on their data notebook.
I believe that data notebooks can be implemented into any classroom as a way to promote student voice through self-reflection and development of their leadership skills.
This is a guest blog written by one of the teachers in our Innovative Teacher Leader cohort to share about an innovative teacher or practice from their area of the state. To learn more about the work happening in the Commonwealth from these Innovative Teacher Leaders, who are working to redefine teacher leadership in Kentucky, check back throughout the month of March. We’ll be sharing guest blogs all month long.
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