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
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
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 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:
Object(s): reference