School Leadership Teams (SLTs) play a critical role in our schools, and the collaboration of this team is a key to school success. In this article, Eastmoor Academy’s SLT reflects on the team’s efforts.

 

Our school leadership team is highly functioning for two main reasons. The first is the history of strong Professional Learning Communities inside our school for individual departments and cross-curricular groupings. For several years, teachers at Eastmoor Academy have participated in highly functioning PLCs, and that has led to a very cooperative environment for the SLT. The second reason that the SLT is successful is the teacher empowerment provided by the group.  Ideas from all members are explored and authority is shared. We have designated professional development each month with the entire staff that is led by the SLT. These are collaborative in nature, not authoritarian. The SLT fosters a "We're in this together!" attitude that transcends the typical dissemination of information that that typifies many staff meetings.

 

This school year, the Eastmoor SLT has focused on initiatives in several areas, all of which center on rigor and relevance. We spent extra time last summer with our Freshman to enhance their acclimation to high school. The entire school knows our vision statement and can state it on demand (students, custodians, faculty, etc.). We pushed Socratic Seminars and MLA standardization for all courses, not just English and Social Studies. We worked with the district on our Problem of Practice (increasing rigor and relevance in classrooms and supporting students in achieving higher levels of work) by visiting classrooms and charting trends. We introduced an "overload" calendar on a whiteboard in the main office that shows all major assignments, tests, trips, etc., to balance our students' work. We worked with other Region 1 schools to build a functioning PLC. Together we looked at articles on how to build a PLC and used the Socratic Seminar process to dig deeply into the content. We looked at best practices at a few of the member schools. Inside our building we are currently focusing on building strong relationships between staff members.” 
 
The SLT at Eastmoor Academy consists of the following:  Principal Alesia Gillison, English Chair Carla Mae Phillips, Social Studies Chair George Timmons, Mathematics Chair Carrie Tubaugh, Science Chair Amanda Looney, and Faculty Rep. Sue McCoy.