A Reflection

Andrea G. Dagnalan
April 25, 2017

Many schools in our district have used the programs and best
practices to ensure that students get their educational needs. In
Elementary schools for instance, these programs are heavily utilized.
Current practices include the Daily Five, Targeted reading Intervention
(TRI), reading programs such as corrective reading, reading mastery
and letter land, online programs such as Study Island, learning
odyssey, Moby max, and many others. Despite the plethora of
programs in most schools, students are not at the level that they
should be. Yes, students are making progress but they are not high
enough to call themselves independent learners or readers. As
teachers and instructional leaders, it is our duty to ensure that our
students are served to reach their potential and allow them to become
self-sufficient individuals.
Our teachers are expected to develop critical thinking skills
among our students. This is achievable when we as a school or district
would be intentional with our vision and mission. What is it that we
want to achieve as a district? Or what path are we heading towards as
a school? We have made several gains over the past years and that is
evidenced by the fact that we are no longer at the bottom of list for
LEA rankings throughout the state. As a future administrator, I will
utilize the knowledge and experience I gained from this project to
come up with plausible action steps towards achieving our end-result.
Serving as Principal resident at the High School level has made
me become aware the importance of having students prepared before
transitioning to high school. I have seen majority of students lacked the
very basic skills for computing and they have moved up to high school.
As it is, we need to be more intentional with providing our students the
skills they need to master at the elementary level, middle school and
high school. If I were a principal at the elementary level, I had to make
sure that the students leaving my elementary school building
possessed the skills they need to succeed in Middle school. Similarly, if
I were the principal of the Middle school, I am duty-bound to ensure
that all the students I am sending off to high school possessed the
skills needed to succeed in obtaining secondary education. If, I were
the high school principal, I had to make sure that my graduates would
be all college and career ready. In reality, this doesnt occur. Seldom do
we find school executives acting more intentional with making sure
that all students are successful when they transition to higher grades.
I am fortunate enough to have been exposed to the kind of
leadership that my principal mentor at Southeast Halifax High School
has. It was not a perfect leadership but it has the ingredients of what I
may call a leader who cares about the students. I also am fortunate to
be able to work with the assistant principal who also exhibited utter
concern for the students academic success.
I have witnessed how the administrative team made the most of
the kind of resources that we had to provide for the academic needs of
our students. There was purposeful planning to ensure that scheduling
allowed for students to be with certified teachers to receive
additional help in reading and math and other areas. The
administrative team is clear about what it wants to accomplish and
they are focused on how to achieve it. They tried to have a
collaborative working environment. I saw some best teaching practices
that have given us positive results.
However, there is still much work to be done. There is still a big
work to do to encourage community partnerships. The school has been
successful with curbing gang-related fights and other discipline
infractions by infusing age-appropriate activities. I would like to see
some flexibility with other district policy i.e. the use of school uniform.
It has been one of the major infractions that students had committed
this school year. I had a student with disability who was suspended for
not wearing the right school color. The student had never been
disobedient or disrespectful all throughout his stay in high school. His
first infraction I was told was the failure to wear the proper school
uniform claimed he was wearing the right school color.
Using the knowledge I learned from researching about the
developmental needs of high school students, I can infer that more and
more students will violate the policy particularly the lower grade
because it is during this stage that teenagers possess exaggerated
sense of their own uniqueness. Of course, there are other factors that
contribute to why students violate policies. But knowing adolescent
behavior during this cognitive growth helps in understanding why they
do what they do.