Recently our principal was notified that the school had the budget to hire another teacher assistant. In the past when hiring teacher assistants it was the leader's decision. The school had a set of standard questions they would ask the applicant. This year the school is in the process of changing administrators and the Interim Principal is currently in charge of hiring. She has decided to use the advice of her current teacher assistants in hiring the new teacher assistant.
Not only is she including the teacher assistants in the process, she is changing the questions for the interview and allowing the teacher assistants to be in the interview. She is soliciting the input of her current staff by having the teacher assistants create the questions to be asked of the potential candidate. Now the teacher assistants have created questions and will be asking the questions in the interview. At the end of the process the assistants will be rating the candidates and giving their feedback to the principal.
She felt it was important to include the people who would be directly affected by the new staff member. Also she wanted to empower her teacher assistants by giving them more of a leadership role. It was important to her to involve her staff in making this decision, even when ultimately it would be her final decision. I see this model to be similar to the Maier model upper left quadrant (A*q). She wanted to make sure her decision was a fair and sensitive to the needs of her staff and students. Also it goes along with the facilitative leader model where she gathered input from individuals and decided.
If I was an administrator I think I would handle the situation similar. I feel like it is important to empower your staff and give them opportunities to be in a leadership position. I would have had the same assistants sit in on all the interviews in order for the assistants to get a clear picture of each applicant. That way they can make a decision and rate the applicants accordingly. When you see two out of four applicants it makes it hard for you to decide which applicant you would choose. I think it was a wonderful idea for the assistants to help create the questions because they are in the position and know what is expected of that individual.
I think retention is a very difficult decision for a principal to make. I think in that it very easy to see in some situations that a student may or may not benefit from retention however there are others cases that are not so black and white. I also think there is that fear there to make sure you are making a decision that will benefit the child. When it comes to repeating a grade you do not want that child to move on and sink in that next grade, however you do not want to retain them and it end up not being beneficial. Many factors must go into play when it comes to retaining a child as well such as age, height, will their self esteem suffer, documents and test scores, ESL/EC services, notes, report card grades, and other proof that this child should repeat.
ReplyDeleteAt the end of last year, we had a very similar situation that Andrea’s current principal is facing. My principal had to make the decision to retain or promote a kindergartner. This student could read 15 words and could write 10 sight words. His sounds were not in place which affected his writing. He had a difficult time writing words due to his lack of sounds. This also affected his sentence writing. I was part of this committee and from the evidence I saw, 1st grade may be a huge struggle. This teacher took the proper steps however to get this student help. She took him through the intervention team and this student had numerous interventions in place to help him with his word/sound fluency.
His DIBELS scores all fell in the high risk category. He went to an intensive reading group. From the data presented and the conversation the retention committee had, we decided it may benefit this child to repeat kindergarten. The parents were not happy about this choice. They begged and pleaded with my principal to allow them to get a tutor and allow their child to improve over the summer and enter 1st. My principal agreed that they had the summer to get their child up to the end of the year kindergarten, beginning of the year first grade benchmarks. If their child met the benchmark goals, he would be promoted. The parents agreed to it however their constraint was that the testing not be done by a kindergarten or first grade teacher. My principal had no problem with this and had our literacy facilitator test him. The student was tested in August, before the current year started, and he is repeating kindergarten again,
I think that your principal made the best decision here. The change from 2nd to 3rd is a very rigorous one. The basics are no longer taught and the curriculum in 3rd is very demanding. If a student struggled in 2nd where the teacher was concerned, the 3rd would be a huge struggle. You hate to see a child who just completely sinks in a grade. I understand the parents being upset, however it seems as if this child would benefit from another year of 2nd. I have taught both grades and was shocked at the huge change from 2nd to 3rd. If I saw a 2nd grader really sinking in 2nd, I would think the retention would be the most beneficial to help this student become a stronger student so they would succeed and be ready for the 3rd grade year. I know some teachers can give up on students and just say they need to be retained but if all data (formal and informal assessments, anecdotal notes, observations, portfolios, benchmark scores, etc…) is pointing towards a student struggling, retention may be the most beneficial.