Running Head: VISIONARY LEADERSHIP ANALYSIS PAPER

Visionary Leadership Analysis Paper

Seattle Pacific University EDAD 6580

Kendall Brown

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A. Data Collection:

1. Description of the school:

Orca Elementary school is located in a middle to upper-class community, serving a large group

of diverse students from all over the world. Students who attend Orca Elementary live close by in

surrounding neighborhoods, apartment and condo complexes. Even though students live close by, most

students ride the bus to school with very little family drop off and pick-up. As of this year, our building

is closing in on roughly 800 students, making our school the largest in the district. Within our school

population, 4% receive free and reduced lunch, and there is a small unexcused absence rate of .5%. Of

those students in attendance, 51.4% are male, 48.6% are female, 3.7% are of Hispanic/Latino ethnicity,

51.8% are Asian, 0.2% are Black/African American, 41% are White, and 3.4% identify as two or more

races. Businesses surrounding Orca Elementary consist of Microsoft, Amazon, Expedia, and Nintendo.

Of these businesses, families of students attending Orca Elementary primarily work at Microsoft. This

explains the highest student population group at our school (51.8% Asian), considering that a majority of

Microsoft employees have an Asian Indian background. Given the diversity of our school, we also serve

a large English Language Learner population, with 12% of students identifying as transitional bilingual

(Washington State Report Card OSPI, 2014).

Focusing on our staff, there are 37 classroom teachers at our school, with 31 teaching core

academic classes. We have 6 specialist teachers, 9 special services teachers (ELL, SLP, SPED, etc.), and

11 para educators and instructional assistants. Of these teachers, 45.9% of teachers have a Master’s

Degree. Our school has an Office Manager, secretary, principal and a vice principal.

2. Mission & Vision:

Our building’s mission states, “Success Today for Tomorrow,” which has been our school’s

mission since it opened in 1986. Within our mission are specific goals of our school, which include:

meeting the needs and the interests of the diverse individuals of the school community, seeing teaching

as an art and our community as comprised of artists, choice as essential to learning, learning taking place

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in an emotionally and physically safe environment, and maintaining democratic attitudes, values, and

behaviors. Within our mission is our vision, which states “Success Every Day for Every Student.”

Moving outside of our building, our district’s mission states “Each student will graduate

prepared to lead a rewarding, responsible life as a contributing member of our community and greater

society.” Our district’s vision states, “Every student future ready: prepared for college, prepared for the

global workplace, prepared for personal success.” The missions and visions of both our district and

building and have a similar component of success that is specific to the individual needs and capabilities

of learners. There is also a focus on being future ready, with whatever the future may entail.

3. School-wide Visioning Processes:

As stated earlier, our building’s mission and vision was created in 1986 by our school’s first

principal and core team. This year when I asked to see a write-up of our building’s mission, “Success

Today for Tomorrow,” my principal had to search for it, and claimed that it was handed to him by our

last principal a couple years ago. When I asked a teammate about the history of our mission, a teacher

who has been at our school since the beginning, she stated that it hasn’t changed since (25 plus years

ago). This makes me feel that our mission has not been revisited, only taken on year after year by staff

without much attention and collaboration. In the past couple years however with our new principal, our

building’s vision is something that is consistently communicated and implemented by our staff,

throughout our building, and even into the surrounding community. Again, it states “Success Every Day

for Every Student.” We have banners in each classroom and teacher bracelets with our vision’s slogan of

“Every Day.” Time at the beginning of the year is spent discussing this vision to ensure our staff has an

understanding of its meaning. However there is no inclusion of others in whether it is something that

needs to be discussed, agreed upon, altered, changed completely, kept, etc. Similar to our school’s

mission, our vision (although strongly communicated and well-known), seems to be passed on year to

year without much collaboration.

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At the beginning of each year, our building works to establish our Continuous Improvement Plan

(CIP), which outlines shared goals among grade level teams, as well as shared goals for primary grades

and intermediate grades. Much collaboration, reflection, and analysis is done among teachers in order to

create these goals each year. Recently, efforts have been made to connect teachers’ Professional Growth

and Evaluation Goals (PGE) to our CIP goals, in order to create theme and consistency among the work

we are doing for our instruction and student learning. The work of our teacher leaders in this regard

greatly connects to a continuous school improvement (Disposition 18). The PGE goals break down even

further into each teacher’s specific classroom needs and professionalism, in regards to what they would

like to work on in terms of pedagogy, as well as the specific learning needs of their group of students.

General decisions in our building are made by the Building Leadership Team (BLT). On this

committee, there is one representative from each grade level, one specialist, a special services

representative, one classified teacher, and our administration. When collaborating on a topic, the

“Decision-Making Model” is used, which outlines steps the BLT must take when making decisions,

depending on the type of decision being made. There are three tiers of decisions: Tier 1 being low

impact with little outside collaboration with staff, Tier 2 being moderate impact with BLT members

seeking input from outside colleagues, and Tier 3 being major impact with a need of all staff involved.

The process involves first determining the type of decision, processing the topic through collaboration,

creating a consensus (among BLT and staff), identifying next steps, and then monitoring and adjusting

based on data and feedback. The BLT meets bi-monthly on Wednesday mornings. Seeing that there is a

representative for each team within our staff, these members reach out to their teammates if a decision is

in tier 2 and/or 3. Regardless of the type of decision or topic discussed, BLT notes and discussions are

always emailed out to the entire staff by the principal.

Given our building’s BLT and the structure of the Decision-Making Model, there is strong

collaboration among the BLT. However, the strong collaboration does not extend very far to the

surrounding staff. Even though the decision-making process has been fairly effective for our staff in

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terms of making decisions, a shared feeling among teachers is that those not involved in BLT feel

somewhat out of the loop with what is going on; voices don’t always feel heard, or if they are heard, it’s

sometimes too late. With this being said, regardless of the type of decision being made and tier level, the

decision-making process needs to be re-visited so that all staff members have a clear understanding,

heard voice, and ability to contribute to decisions that impact our building, teaching and learning.

Adding onto the need to re-visit how decisions are made, as a staff we also need to look

at how we can better maintain and sustain the vision/mission/goals over time. Our staff as a whole does

not consistently apply the school’s mission to our collaborative work together, which affects our ability

to cohesively work together and maintain a common mindset. When the time comes at the beginning of

the year, and then periodically throughout the rest of the year, for our staff to work together on our CIP,

PGE, etc., an understanding of the intention or purpose of our work together is not clear to all; it turns

into something we need to check-off and get done. According to Houston (2008), leaders’ jobs are to

“not only see the whole and how the parts contribute to it but also to help others see it” (p. 27).

4. Student Assessment Trends:

SBA Summary Results, grades 3-5 (2014-2015)

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Disaggregated Data by Ethnicity (Largest ethnic populations shown – White and Asian)

Not enough data for Hispanic, Black/African American and 2+ Races

3rd grade SBA, ELA, Asian:

3rd grade SBA, ELA & Math, White:

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4th grade SBA, ELA & Math, Asian:

5th grade SBA, Math, Asian:

5th grade SBA, ELA, White:

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5. Relevant Specialized Programs:

Enrollment % for ELL (all grades):

2014 – 2015 Additional ELL Data: 47 ELL students in grades 1-5

21/47 ELL students exited the language program (44%) 32 Kindergarten ELL students,

13/32 exited (40%)

SPED & 504 Enrollment %:

B. The Visionary Leadership Analysis

1. Advancing a School-Wide Shared Vision for Learning:

Orca Elementary School’s mission and vision is consistent with our district’s mission and vision,

in that both speak to individualized success for each student so that they are future ready. There is a

theme of ensuring students’ success every day (Disposition 20). Although there are similarities between

our building and district, the district mission and vision focus more on the future and what our goals are

for students once they leave our campuses. Our district’s vision states motives such as, “prepared for

college [and] prepared for the global workplace,” and its mission states students being a “contributing

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member of our community and greater society.” More focus is on the job of our students once they are

on their own and have left the school community. As for our building, the focus seems to be more on

their current year of learning, and what it is we can do as a cohesive school community to ensure success

today for each child, with our vision of “Success Every Day for Every Student,” outlining the educability

of all students (Disposition 16) as well as the right of every student to a free, quality education

(Disposition 22). Goals outlined in our school’s mission that focus on the here and now state things such

as “We will draw upon the unique talents of students, staff, parents and volunteers to enrich and

contribute to our school” and “as a community of learners (students, staff, parents, and volunteers), we

will work together to create and maximize opportunities for each and every child’s success.” However,

one motive in our building’s mission does relate to our district’s future-ready mission, with its statement

of “We dedicate ourselves to preparing students to be functional, literate citizens, who can independently

reason through decisions, defend what they have decided, yet be able to accept difference and opinions,

‘honor our laws,’ and participate in the political life of their communities.”

Focusing again on our building’s vision of “Success Every Day for Every Student,” our school

greatly develops an inclusive shared vision that promotes success for each student. As mentioned earlier

in the description of the visioning process, our principal has done a great job with communicating,

sharing and opening discussion centered on our school’s vison. Time was deliberately set aside to delve

deep into our school’s vision, how teachers interpret it, and how it can be applied to our classrooms and

individual students. For example, an activity was done that allowed teachers the opportunity to discuss

and share what success meant to them in their classrooms. It could look like something as simple as a

child raising their hand in class for the first time, or representing our school in a state-wide math

competition. According to Houston (2008) in the discussion of the principle of attention, “What we

attend to shapes what we create, and what we create helps shape our reality” (p. 18). Our principal’s

attention to our vision has helped create inclusivity among our staff.

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Adding onto our principal’s attention and inclusivity surrounding our building’s vision, there is a

shared understanding and commitment among stakeholders. Whether during staff meetings, committee

discussions, or one-on-one conversations, our leader is open to dialogue and discourse surrounding our

goals and vision for our students. As stated in Owens & Valesky (2015), “leadership is a dynamic

interaction with subordinates” (p. 88). However, adding onto the earlier discussion of how decisions get

made in our building through the BLT and Decision-Making Model, our principal can do a better job of

releasing even more control to others either within a committee like BLT or to other staff members. This

is not to say that he never releases control, rather he can do it more often. As earlier stated, there is

strong collaboration and decision-making within the BLT, but outside of it, not so much. The sharing of

the building’s decisions and actions can extend beyond meetings. In the discussion of the organizational

theory movement by Owens & Valesky (2015), “the organization, with all is formal structure and the

rules and regulations to interpret and reinforce that structure, is populated by human beings, with their

very human and personal beliefs, attitudes, assumptions, hopes, and fears. The inner states of these

people, collectively, go a long way to make the organization what it actually is” (p. 89).

Given our principal’s inconsistency with including all members of our building, rather than just a

select few, I feel this is again something that can improve in how we advance a school-wide shared

vision for learning. By subordinating his own interest to the good of the school community, rather than

trudging forward too quickly with what he may feel is right, our principal can accomplish an even more

cohesive and shared vision (Disposition 24). One such case happened last year with an effort to include

more dads of families in our volunteer program at school. Instead of first receiving a shared

understanding from all staff, our principal quickly established a new program in our school without

much consent or clarity.

2. Vision Implementation:

Our building’s vision is implemented and visible through our collaborative work as a staff when

focusing on our CIP and PGE goals. “Success Every Day for Every Student” is evident in our shared

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CIP goals among primary and intermediate grades, in that there is a cohesive effort to create goals for

our students that are appropriate, matched to their learning needs, meaningful, and create opportunities

for success. For example, an important skill for all primary-aged students is reading fluency. After

looking at data together, all primary teachers agreed that a shared need of all students is to have more

opportunity to build reading fluency strategies and skills for future learning. In order to ensure this

success every day for each student, we considered all students, their learning needs and ability levels,

and created a timely, measureable and reasonable goal of 93% of all primary aged students reading at-

standard by the end of the year. This goal is set at a high percentage due to students consistently

performing at or above standard in ELA, as seen in the SBA data (OSPI, 2015). The large Asian Indian

population and Quest program in our building consistently performs high academically, which was also

taken into consideration by all staff in the collaborative work we do together surrounding CIP. The time

organized for our teams to collaborate on these important goals and action plans has allowed us to create

high standards of learning (Disposition 17), focus on continuous school improvement as mentioned

earlier (Disposition 18) and ensure student success (Disposition 20).

Adding onto our work we do together as a staff, our vision is implemented in the time we take to

share and reflect on our pedagogies. In addition to the data that is used to help shape our plans and

activities, there is space for community input as well in regards to what is working and what is not

working to meet the needs of our learners. The collaboration we do together as a staff around CIP and

PGE establishes a willingness to continuously examine one’s own assumptions, beliefs and practices

(Disposition 21). In the discussion by Houston (2008) on “Appreciative Inquiry,” it is stated how an

important principle behind our work together involves “the recognition that the greatest resource for

generating constructive organizational change is the emergence of the collective imagination through

dialogue involving all stakeholders” (p 69). In one particular meeting with primary teachers, I was able

to create a shared document that outlined effective strategies and techniques celebrated by all

stakeholders, which would be used by teachers in building students’ reading fluency skills. Data is

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constantly being collected by grade level teams, our principal, and vice principal in an effort to not only

determine student progress in meeting our goals, but to maintain our school’s vision of success every

day for every student. For intermediate grades, SBA data is analyzed (as seen above) in order to

determine CIP and PGE goals for these grade level teams. Since primary teachers once had these

students, there is still open dialogue between primary and intermediate teachers around SBA results. As

stated earlier, this year there has been an improvement in how we collect and use data to shape our work

together as a staff. Connections are being made between our CIP (shared goals of our staff) and our PGE

(individualized and grade-level team goals).

Apart from CIP and PGE, there are certain committees that also maintain our vision of success

for each student. Using data from our teacher surveys, outside professional research, etc. various staff

activities and professional development opportunities are created. For example, on the Instructional

Team (IT), I help create moments for our staff to share, reflect, and practice ways to help students be

engaged in their classroom learning. What started as teacher and student data, resulted in a collaborative

effort of our building to create individualized success for each student, aligning to our mission and

vision of our school. However, it was not evident what data or research (if any) was used in the initial

creation of our building’s mission and vision. Considering again that our school’s mission and vision

was created back when our school was built provides insight into the lack of data and research to support

our vision’s implementation.

3. Developing Stewardship of the Vision:

“So it’s very important for leaders to have clear in their own mind what their intentions are – not

only what they would like to see happen in a particular set of circumstances or in a particular dynamic,

but also what motivation lies one step beneath the goal itself” (Houston, p. 15). I feel our principal and

other teacher leaders in our building greatly exemplify what their intentions are, and communicate their

hopes with the underlying vision of our building. Within our vision, it states “As a community of

learners, (students, staff, parents, and volunteers), we will work together to create and maximize

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opportunities for each and every child’s success.” In our school, we are able to work cohesively together

to achieve success for each student. For example, in the work that is done among the special services

team in meeting the 12% of students with special needs, systems are in place to share ideas, techniques,

strategies, and plans for classroom learning between special education and general education teachers

(OSPI, 2015). Our principal sets time aside throughout the year for a roundtable discussion among all

stakeholders in our students’ learning, maintaining the shared vision and understanding throughout our

staff. In specific committees that work to address the challenging needs of students, parents and outside

community members are involved in decision-making, so that all perspectives and ideas are being

included. These systems and committees that have been established out of student need greatly align to

our teacher leaders’ ability to create culturally responsive programs (Disposition 19), of which our

principal is a prominent member.

Even though our vision is understood by all members of our school community, along with its

intention geared towards the individualized success of each learner, our vision has yet to be used for

effective communication among all stakeholders. Referring back to my earlier discussion of how

decisions are made through the BLT and Decision-Making Model, strong collaboration exists among

BLT members, but the level of engagement and voice from all staff members in decisions and topics

discussed is lacking. As discussed in the school-wide visioning process, there are tiers to the type of

topic being discussed. Seeing that our building doesn’t always have a tier 3 topic being discussed that

would involve all members of our building, most topics are discussed by BLT in tier 1 and tier 2

protocols. Therefore, little involvement, communication and collaboration among all stakeholders exists.

As mentioned earlier, I feel our decision-making process needs to be re-visited in terms of how decisions

are made and the process through which items are discussed. There needs to be ethical principles to the

decision-making process, as outline in Disposition 23. According to Houston (2008) in the discussion of

the principle of a holistic perspective, “Your job is to create the structures that bring people together for

collaboration and to open the communication pathways in all directions” (p. 27). I feel our staff has a

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holistic perspective, our principal just needs to release control and open that pathway for all stakeholders

to be contributing members where all voices can be heard.

Achievements and efforts toward the vision are consistently celebrated by our staff. Every other

week during our staff meeting, our principal sets aside a time for kudos, in which staff members get to

thank colleagues for their hard work, effort and support. This might be for something related to the hard

work that goes into success every day for each student (our vision) and/or in the personal collegial work

we do with each other day in and day out. Our principal has done a great job to create what Owens &

Valesky (2015) refer to as “growth –enhancing environments,” in which recognition for teachers and the

celebration of their hard work leads to motivation to continue such hard work. There needs to be a

combination of both the human social system (human needs) and the institution (school) to create an

effective, trusting, collaborative organization (Owns, p. 105). The social relationships, team building,

and personal satisfaction exemplify our principal’s efforts of developing a caring school community

(Disposition 27). In addition to staff meetings, celebrations also frequently occur behind closed doors

and in the hallways of our building when individualized student success happens in our school.

4. Concluding Reflection:

Now having studied my building’s mission and vision, decision-making processes, and

collaboration among our staff, I have a stronger understanding of what it takes to be an effective teacher

leader. Referencing back to the section, “Vision Implementation” on page eleven, our CIP and PGE

collaborative work together this year has developed into learning that is cohesive, partnered, ongoing,

and that of shared responsibility. Seeing that discussions focused on CIP and PGE work directly affect

each individual in our building, (in the creating of personal teacher goals), and is treated as ongoing and

shared (in the connection among all student growth goals for primary and intermediate classrooms), I

have realized that this could be a reason for strong collaboration in this area of our work as a building.

Based on what I have seen, I feel that collaboration among all stakeholders can be easier to achieve when

topics being discussed directly involve the contribution, shared work, and responsibility of each one of

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our staff members, and a holistic approach is taken in the type of work we are doing. According to

Houston, leaders must “not only see the whole and how the parts contribute to it but also to help others

see it” (2008, p. 27). Witnessing the success of this area of collaboration in our building has led me to

appreciate and understand how to similarly implement a shared vision among all staff in such a way that

all stakeholders find purpose in their work, interconnectedness among their peers, and a shared focus on

student learning. With this being said, as a future teacher leader I plan on modeling similar continuous

school improvement for the sake of each one of my teacher’s personal growth and the individualized

success of all students (Disposition 18). Under the discussion of “Developing Stewardships of the

Vision,” I mention the programs, activities, and roundtable discussions that are embedded throughout the

year by our principal that further our ability to collaborate and focus on student needs. Being a current

member on such committees and programs, I also plan on taking my current learning and first-hand

experience in creating similar opportunities for my staff as a teacher leader, so that other members of the

school community could become stewards of our school’s mission and vision through their work within

programs and leadership positions that ensure student success and the educability of all students

(Dispositions 16, 19, & 20).

Although there is strong collaboration among CIP, PGE, and growth goals for teachers and

students, the same collaboration does not exist in other areas, decision-making. With this being said, I

have realized an inconsistency between areas of work we do together as a building. Referencing back to

the sections, “School-Wide Visioning Processes” on page 4 and 5, as well as “Advancing a School-Wide

Shared Vision for Learning” on page 10, I discussed how there only seems to be collaboration and

decision-making happening among the members of our BLT. Also, I shared how the Decision-Making

Model needs to be re-visited in how topics that come through our building are handled and discussed, so

that inclusivity, shared understanding, and input from among all staff can be accomplished. Again, most

topics that are discussed in BLT fall in the category of Tier 1 and 2 (low-impact with little outside staff

involvement). This is where the problem lies; seeing that all building members are only involved when

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topics fall under the category of Tier 3, (in which very little topics do), too many items and discussions

go unrealized by staff members. This has resulted in frustration by our staff. Even though a low-impact

item may have been discussed in BLT, it still impacts every staff member in some way. For example, an

after school teaching workshop was scheduled for the entire staff, when it was only communicated via

email by our principal two days prior. Not even everyone on the BLT knew about this happening. A

workshop is low-impact, but it still affects each staff member.

Having studied how decisions are currently being made in our building has led me to understand

what is it that I would do differently in order to create stronger collaboration and more effective

decision-making among all members in the building. Also taking into account my first-hand

experiences, this is what I would do to improve the Decision-Making Model and process so that there is

shared input from all staff members, and consistency among all types of collaborative work we do as a

building. As a teacher leader, regardless of what item or topic comes through our building, I would

ensure that all staff members are provided with the same opportunity to provide input and share their

ideas. Even if a BLT existed, the communication and pathway between BLT representatives and team

members would be open and fluid. I don’t believe there would be a Tier 1, 2 and 3, but instead all items

would be treated as needing staff input. I understand this type of input and collaboration takes time, but

again as principal, I would subordinate my own interest (of simply getting something done quickly based

on my own opinion or the input of a small group) to the good of my entire staff (Disposition 24). As seen

in the example I gave regarding the teacher workshop, it is not ethical to force all staff members to

attend something when they were uninformed of it even taking place. What is ethical is remembering

that decisions (big or small) affect all staff members, and therefore all members need to be involved in

decisions (Disposition 23). Keeping in mind the key principles of openness, trust, and intention, I plan

on respecting my teachers’ contractual time and personal life outside of work (Houston, pgs. 14-15, 29-

34).

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I have also learned that all teacher leaders will make mistakes at some point or another, and just

like teachers continuously work to improve their practice, so do principals. If similar frustrations were

happening with my staff regarding how decisions are made, as a teacher leader I would strive to listen to

my staff in order to understand their concerns, and therefore what it is I could do to better the situation

for everyone. I would take it upon myself to accept the consequence for my actions, and work the

problem with my colleagues (Disposition 25). A collaborative problem-solving approach would take

place with my staff to ensure the decision-making process was effective and working for the good of the

entire school with students at the forefront. With this being said, I have realized the importance to

continuously examine and reflect on my own practices and beliefs as a teacher leader, so that I may

understand how my assumptions and beliefs are impacting those around me (Disposition 21). By doing

so, my own assumptions will not overpower or undermine the beliefs of those I work with. With this in-

depth study of my building, as well as my first-hand experiences in my work with fellow staff members

thus far, I feel that I am walking away more knowledgeable of what it means to work as a teacher leader

in a school community that embodies and strives to maintain a shared mission and vision.

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Reference List:

Houston, P.D., Blankstein, A.M., & Cole, R.W. (2008). Spirituality in Educational Leadership. Thousand Oakes, CA: Corwin. ISBN:9781412949422

Owens, R.G., & Valesky, T.C. (2015). Organizational Behavior in Education: Leadership and School Reform (11th ed.). Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon. ISBN: 9780133489033

Washinton State Report Card . (2014). In Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction . Retrieved November 8, 2015, from http://reportcard.ospi.k12.wa.us/summary.aspx?groupLevel=District