For the next couple of days, the Principals’ Office will feature reflections from the 2007 National Distinguished Principals, as they respond to the question: What skill or concept did you learn through professional development in the past year that you plan to implement this year?

This is what NDP Richard R. Alix, principal of Spangdahlem Elementary School in Spangdahlem, Germany, had to say:

I was recently reassigned to a new school in a U.S. Department of Defense Educational Activity overseas school. My focus this year is actually a continuation of active school improvement. In my last assignment, I worked closely with the school improvement leadership team in developing collaborative approaches to promote assessment driven instruction to address areas in the student performance profiles that needed to show greater growth.

The value of formative and summative assessment and the processes involved in identifying key skills for focused attention in each grade level’s performance and curricular standards highlight the positive outcome when assessment data is used to guide instruction.

In this new school, I plan on working with the school improvement leadership team in designing staff development programs that will equip the instructional staff with the skills necessary to promote collaboration in identifying grade level focus on highest student achievement, as identified by the student performance data.

As I work in collaboration with the teachers at this new school, staff development in each of these areas will be necessary to build capacity. Specifically, we need to identify the curricular and performance standards that we are going to teach and when we are going to teach them. Through staff development on benchmarking, teachers will be able to clearly assess if the students learned the necessary skills. By learning how to differentiate instruction, the staff will be equipped to teach each child as he or she needs to learn. This is a path to excellence, and it is a process that will evolve over the years of my tenure in this new school.

How have you approached working with a school improvement leadership team?