In addressing the NY State Standards that regard staff development and supervision, my beliefs surrounding teacher supervision and evaluation are largely based on the theories put forth by Kim Marshall, which is visualized in the diagram presented here.

When enacting these theories, though, I realize that it is important to keep in mind a couple key ideas regarding public versus private schools:

• A key point to making assessment and analysis effective is that of having ongoing professional learning community meetings about student achievement results and keeping everything low-stakes.  This is hard to do, especially in today’s public schools where everything seems to be high-stakes.

• Not all schools have the flexibility in choosing their teacher evaluation rubrics.  New York City schools are currently focusing on Charlotte Danielson’s Framework for Teaching, while the school in which I interned (a private, for-profit school) was able to pick and choose the elements it feels would be develop staff capacity.

I personally believe in the power of professional learning communities within schools to strengthen the unity and shared vision of the school community as a whole. 

Coupling that with the visibility and openness of mini-observations with faculty would place improvement on teaching and learning at the highest priority of a school. 

However, every administrator must decide for themself what their priorities as a school leader will be. 

Promoting distributed leadership, fostering professional learning communities, and supporting every child to reach high educational standards are my priorities, and I hope to soon be able to employ the strategies outlined here to support my educational leadership objectives.

While interning at The British International School of New York, I assisted the school's leaders in improving their appraisal policy by identifying a continuous challenge of professional practice, presenting best-practice techniques, and following up with information provided.  I learned through follow-up interviews that my proposed plan of action was leading to a revised approach to teacher supervision and evaluation.

See the attached powerpoint presentation for the professional development session I held with the school's leaders, presenting best-practice techniques surrounding teacher supervision and evaluation. 

It addresses the NY State Standard to develop staff capability for addressing student learning needs by effective supervision and evaluation of teachers, by effective staff assignments, support, and mentoring, and by providing staff with opportunities for continuous professional development.