L1. Establish a site/campus-based leadership team to guide efforts to improve language and pre-literacy instruction.

In this lesson, you and your colleagues will focus on establishing a site/campus-based leadership team to guide your efforts to promote literacy and language development.

In Part 1, you will learn who should be part of this team and what their roles will be.

In Part 2, you will learn ways to build your team and collaborate as a team to support your literacy plan.

To get started, download the Implementation Guide for this component and refer to the Action Step for this lesson. Review the Implementation Indicators for each level of implementation and note the Sample Evidence listed at the bottom of the chart.

A site/campus-based leadership team consists of leaders at the school who possess knowledge of language and literacy development and have experience with age-appropriate language and literacy instruction for children age 0 to school entry.

The leadership team may consist of school-based administrators and teachers or early childhood site directors and instructional staff. Other leadership team members may include pediatricians and other primary healthcare providers, early intervention specialists, children’s librarians, and others who are closely involved with overseeing young children’s development and preparing them for literacy achievement.

Teachers with experience in maintaining ongoing and trusting relationships with parents and children will be important in building the family partnerships needed for a successful initiative. Pediatricians, therapists, early childhood site directors, and instructional staff enjoy valuable opportunities to partner with families to promote language and pre-literacy development prior to the time children reach the age of formal schooling.

Per the TSLP, it’s also important to define the roles and responsibilities of the team members. Clearly defined team leadership roles and responsibilities will improve the communication and outcomes of your improvement efforts. Putting this information in writing will help members understand their individual roles and responsibilities on the team.

The following are examples of team member responsibilities:

• Setting the date, time, and location of the meeting
• Creating the agenda and sending it to all team members at least one week ahead of time
• Planning a team-building activity
• Creating and filing a sign-in sheet for each meeting
• Recording discussions and decisions made during the meeting and sending a follow-up communication after the meeting
• Gathering, analyzing, and sharing data
• Planning professional development
• Meeting with community partners
• Developing opportunities for family partnerships

It is helpful for team members to be aware of one another’s assignments and contributions to the team. This way, new ideas and problems can be shared with the appropriate team members.

Everyone benefits when there are clear responsibilities and roles. To inspire your team and to emphasize the importance of collaboration, you might want to think of an acronym for your team like the example shown below:

T.E.A.M. = Together Everyone Achieves More

The work you do as a team is focused on sharing your expertise and time to collaboratively solve problems and make informed decisions about language and pre-literacy instruction. You will set policies and procedures that support ongoing interaction, intervention, and support for staff and children. Building strong relationships within the site/campus-based leadership team—as well as with families and staff—will strengthen your ability to positively impact children’s development.

TO LEARN MORE: See the activities sheet “Quick Team-Building Ideas.” These activities can be used to start a meeting and help members learn more about one another.

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

• one member will collect ideas for the agenda, create it, and send it to the team, along with everyone’s contact information;
• a second member will bring last year’s assessment data to share with the team;
• 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
• 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

• establish roles and routines for the team meetings;
• discuss the issues impacting children’s development and learning;
• (plan to) use data to inform decisions by the team;
• maintain communication; and
• (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:

• Recruit stakeholders and invite them to participate as leadership team members.
• Create a written description of the roles of the leadership team members.
• Set your first meeting.
• Establish a yearlong meeting schedule at a place and time that works for all members.
• Develop and clarify policies and procedures.
• Find out what leadership team members know about current policies and procedures.
• Update and collect new contact information for members.

L1. Establish a site/campus-based leadership team to guide efforts to improve language and pre-literacy instruction.

With your site/campus-based leadership team, review your team’s self-assessed rating for Action Step L1 in the TSLP Implementation Status Ratings document and then respond to the four questions in the assignment.

TSLP Implementation Status Ratings 0-SE

In completing your assignment with your team, the following resources and information from this lesson’s content may be useful to you:

• Refer to Part 1 for an overview of roles and responsibilities of site/campus-based leadership team members.
• Refer to Part 2 for information about establishing your team and collaborating to support your literacy plan.

Next Steps also contains suggestions that your site or campus may want to consider when you focus your efforts on this Action Step.

To record your responses, go to the Assignment template for this lesson and follow the instructions.