To get started with your site/campus-based leadership team, you will need to recruit members. Again, this team should be comprised of members with expertise regarding children age 0 to school entry.
As your team begins to meet regularly, members will identify any challenges to the implementation of the TSLP, determine how they will be addressed, and decide who will be responsible for different actions. In most cases, having action items in writing will help the team monitor and follow up. It is important to keep in mind that the purpose of the team's collaboration and activities is to improve outcomes for children.
One of the initial steps your team will take is to identify data that can be used to guide efforts to improve language and pre-literacy instruction. Once you identify and collect useful data, you and your team will need to review the data to identify strengths and needs. Then you can focus improvement efforts around the specific needs of your school.
Collaboratively, your team can develop plans to track progress and ensure that the school is adhering to the team's established policies, procedures, and timelines. For example, you may identify a need to assist staff in reviewing assessment results so you can encourage them to make appropriate changes to lesson plans.
As your team looks at how to improve language and pre-literacy instruction at your school, you may decide to establish routines and procedures to support needed changes. Part of your responsibility as the leadership team is to find effective ways to communicate these changes, routines, and procedures to staff, along with clear expectations for implementation. Providing written descriptions of important routines and procedures, such as the use of checklists or daily logs, will help ensure that important activities continue even if there are changes in staff or in the leadership team. At the same time, you may need to modify procedures as needs change and as resources shift. Therefore, you may communicate to staff that they need to be flexible to the demands of a changing environment.
To help your team get off to a great start, read the scenario below and imagine that you have participated in the early activities of a successful team.
Scenario: Thoughtful interviewing and recruitment has allowed ABC Child Education Center to create a strong site-based leadership team. There are four members on the team, and they work together to accomplish important leadership actions.
First, all team members agree on the time and place of the first meeting at 4:00 p.m., a week from Tuesday, at the school office.
At the first meeting, a team-building activity gives all members an opportunity to introduce themselves. Next, team members discuss roles and responsibilities and make initial decisions about who will fill each role. During the meeting, each team member agrees to serve in a role such as recorder, leader, timekeeper, and team builder.
During this meeting, the team members identify current challenges and begin problem solving together. They formulate an initial timeline and outline the first steps. The person who has agreed to take on the recorder role takes notes on the discussion and, at future meetings, will note action items accomplished.
The site director asks the recorder to review the notes about each member’s responsibility for the next meeting. She reads aloud that
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one member will collect ideas for the agenda, create it, and send it to the team, along with everyone’s contact information;
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a second member will bring last year’s assessment data to share with the team;
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a third team member will bring a school-year calendar to assist in building plan timelines and will also bring a copy of the TSLP for each team member; and
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a fourth team member has agreed to create and bring sign-in sheets and then file them for the team after each meeting.
The recorder sends a follow-up memo to team members after the meeting, and the leader encourages the team to keep communication open, even between meetings.
You can see that ABC Child Education Center is off to a solid start with its team. Some of the things the team did well were to
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establish roles and routines for the team meetings;
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discuss the issues impacting children’s development and learning;
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(plan to) use data to inform decisions by the team;
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maintain communication; and
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(plan to) meet regularly
NEXT STEPS: Depending on your progress in establishing your site/campus-based leadership team, you may want to consider the following next steps:
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Recruit stakeholders and invite them to participate as leadership team members.
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Create a written description of the roles of the leadership team members.
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Set your first meeting.
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Establish a yearlong meeting schedule at a place and time that works for all members.
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Develop and clarify policies and procedures.
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Find out what leadership team members know about current policies and procedures.
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Update and collect new contact information for members.