Caslon Community | Resources

Roles of the Principal Excerpt Chapter 3

This book explores the multidimensional roles of the school principal, including instructional leader, resource manager, social architect of learning, and community organizer and activist.

Dr. Isola is the principal who led the successful turnaround effort at Sanchez School over 13 years. Readers will readily relate to his perspective, examples, and stories about:
• the principal’s roles in school transformation,
• the principal’s efforts to balance attention to top-down reform mandates with socioemotional and instructional approaches that lead to real student learning, and
• the principal’s collaborations for shared leadership, family engagement, and teacher agency.

This is a story told by a principal, Raymond R. Isola, and a university researcher, Jim Cummins, to illustrate the dynamic and complex processes of education reform during a turbulent time in the history of education in this country. It is a tale of a principal and his staff making choices in the best interests of their students.

Publication: Transforming Sanchez School

Topic: Policy, Leadership, and Advocacy

Specialty:

Object(s): reference

Science of Reading Clip

This is a clip of Kathy Escamilla's presentation during the 2021 CABE conference, titled "Developing (Bi)Literacy for Emerging Bilingual Learners: Research Based Approaches".

Publication: Biliteracy from the Start: Literacy Squared in Action

Topic: Curriculum, Instruction, and Assessment

Specialty:

Shared Leadership Excerpt Chapter 4

The term “shared leadership” refers to the sharing of leadership opportunities and responsibilities among all members of the school staff and the grounding of instructional directions and initiatives in the empirical research evidence. The expertise that develops through collaboration in assuming leadership roles is distributed among all engaged parties.

Publication: Transforming Sanchez School

Topic: Policy, Leadership, and Advocacy

Specialty:

Object(s): reference

Supporting ELL Transition in Early Education

A young child’s experiences on the first day of school can set the stage for the whole school year and beyond. When that child is new to the language of the school, the adjustments are even more challenging. Careful attention to a young ELL’s transition into your classroom, and then from your classroom to the next, can really make a difference for the child, the teacher, and the whole class. Here are some strategies and resources to turn transitions into opportunities for success. Though these suggestions are primarily for students in U.S. schools, most are still excellent suggestions for supporting the transitions of ELs in any academic context.

Publication: Caslon Community

Topic: Program Implementation and Evaluation

Specialty:

Early Childhood

Bilingual Learner

Object(s): article

Teacher Agency Excerpt Chapter 1

Isola and Cummins describe how the faculty at Sanchez School worked together to identify strengths and needs of their students, families, and the school. These educators then collaborated in the design and implementation of organizational and instructional changes that significantly increased the academic achievement of its low-income students from linguistically diverse backgrounds. This book documents the power of teachers to change the culture of a school through teacher agency.

Publication: Transforming Sanchez School

Topic: Policy, Leadership, and Advocacy

Specialty:

Object(s): reference

Teacher Leadership Excerpt Chapter 1

One of the most effective ways to transform classrooms for multilingual learners, including English language learners (ELLs), is to prepare all teachers to differentiate instruction and assessment in ways that build on what these students can do with oral and written language. Teacher leadership offers the opportunity to build collective capacity in differentiating for multilingual learners through purposeful collaboration.

All teachers need to share responsibility for the multilingual learners in their classes, but their roles and responsibilities differ. General education teachers need to know how to differentiate content-area instruction and assessment by ELD levels so that ELLs have opportunities to learn in general education classes. ELD teachers need to know how to teach and assess language through content, and how to support their general education colleagues’ learning. As general education teachers assume responsibility for the ELLs in their classrooms, ELD teachers can take on more of a leadership and capacity-building role in the general education program.

Publication: Differentiating Instruction and Assessment for English Language Learners: A Guide for K-12 Teachers, second edition

Topic: Curriculum, Instruction, and Assessment

Specialty:

Teacher Leadership Excerpt Chapter 4

Transforming Sanchez School: Shared Leadership, Equity, and Evidence, by Raymond Isola and Jim Cummins, provides an example of how principals, school-based leadership teams, and community partners built a successful school through shared instructional leadership, focused and sustained professional learning, and community engagement. The story of Sanchez School offers detailed examples of how these diverse constituents created powerful learning and leadership opportunities for everyone involved and includes evidence of improved student outcomes over a 10-year period.

For example, Sanchez educators clearly define roles and responsibilities for teacher leaders within three primary shared leadership structures:
1. Grade-level meetings for all preschool through 5th-grade teachers
2. Instructional leadership team meetings
3. School Site Council meetings

Isola and Cummins emphasize the importance of educator identity, agency, and choice in transforming schools at the local level. Their work will inspire educators to action in ways that make sense in any linguistically and culturally diverse school context.

Publication: Transforming Sanchez School

Topic: Policy, Leadership, and Advocacy

Specialty:

Early Childhood

Elementary

Bilingual Learner

Object(s): reference