Shared Leadership: The Essential Ingredient for Effective PLCs / Edition 1

by Terry Wilhelm

Overview

Supercharge your school culture with authentic shared leadership.

Why do so many professional learning communities (PLCs) fail? Terry Wilhelm answers this question—and more—by challenging educators to work together once and for all to cultivate shared leadership. Through simple practices and processes, Shared Leadership: The Essential Ingredient for Effective PLCs highlights approaches that spark and sustain a successful PLC. If you need how-to steps to fuel a healthy school culture in curriculum, instruction, and assessment, it’s all here:

• Developing teacher leadership and enhancing collaboration
• Discussion protocols to fire up team meetings
• Tools and troubleshooting tips
• Common scenarios and dilemmas

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781506311227
Publisher:	SAGE Publications
Publication date:	07/15/2016
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	240
Product dimensions:	8.40(w) x 10.80(h) x 0.40(d)

About the Author

Terry Wilhelm, M.A., has served as a teacher, principal, district office and area service agency administrator, and university adjunct professor in educational leadership. Her work with principals and school leadership teams spans over fifteen years and is the basis for this book. K-12 urban, rural, and suburban schools of all sizes are represented in her work with teams. During her service at the Riverside County Office of Education in Riverside, California, she was Administrator, then Director of the Riverside County School Leadership Center of the California School Leadership Academy (CSLA). When she was appointed Director, Educational Leadership Services, she continued the former CSLA School Leadership Teams (SLT) program, re-engineered to support schools working to become professional learning communities. Between 2003 and 2012, 56 schools from ten districts that participated in SLT met the criteria for inclusion on allthingsplc.info. An external evaluator determined that achievement at these schools exceeded that of similar non-program schools in the county and state, and that they sustained their improvement trajectories after participating in the two-year program for the duration of the study. Wilhelm has authored many articles on school improvement, and is a regular contributor to Leadership, the journal of the Association of California School Administrators. Her weekly column, Leaders’ Link, written for Hot Chalk, Inc., is published at http://education.cu-portland.edu/blog/leaders-link/leaders-link-welcome/. She is a national consultant and founder/owner of Educators 2000, www.educators2000.com.

Table of Contents

The Right Team
Creating the Calendar and Reflecting on Readiness
Preparations
Guiding Coalition Meeting – Getting Started
Essential Learnings and Common Assessments
Guiding Coalition Meeting: More Best Practice Meeting Routines, Essential Learnings and Common Assessments
Guiding Coalition Meeting: Mission, Vision, Collective Commitments
Managing Complex Change
Discussion Protocols: A Bridge From Meetings-as-Usual to Professional Collaboration
Guiding Coalition Meeting: Student Work Protocol
Guiding Coalition Meeting: Student-Based Protocol
Guiding Coalition Meeting: Planning/Problem Solving Protocol
Guiding Coalition Meeting: Goal Setting and SMARTe Goals
Building Shared Knowledge About Student Interventions
Guiding Coalition Meeting: Student Interventions
Guiding Coalition Meeting: Working With Challenging Individuals
Guiding Coalition Meeting: Leading as Optimizers and Affirmers to Build Collective Efficacy
Sustaining a Culture of Shared Leadership

Editorial Reviews

"Terry Wilhelm provides a unique perspective on a critical aspect of the PLC process—shared leadership. As the PLC movement continues to proliferate, such guidance is both needed and timely. "

Robert J. Marzano

"The book’s major strength is the credibility of the elegant research from the author’s own experiences and well as an extensive discussion of research from the literature. This book would be an excellent resource for the Superintendent of any K-12 school district to use as professional development for district administrators. Of course, the book is a “must” for school principals who are striving to develop school leadership skills among the significant adults in their schools. "

Adeline Civretta

"Every principal and every administrator who supervises principals with the goal of improving student outcomes through shared leadership and PLCs in their schools should read this book. It is packed with practical how-tos based on the author’s real-time experience working with school teams for over 15 years. There’s so much here…Terry has thought of just about everything to help principals and teachers grow professionally and to transform their schools for the benefit of their students. "

Dr. Kathy Wright

"In my years as a principal and leadership consultant I have always been on the lookout for practical and useful resources that can help school leaders in real time. Terry Wilhelm has provided such a resource. This book is filled with practical guidance and useful tools that can have an immediate impact on a school’s culture and ability to meet students' needs. I highly recommend this book! "

Greg Cameron

"Shared Leadership does an excellent job of providing principals with a step-by-step process for leading change in their schools. Professional Learning Communities are not something schools just have. They have to be developed and nurtured. Terry Wilhelm provides that process with many supportive resources and practices. There is also an excellent research base for the content presented in the book. The best part about this book is that principals have the ability to determine what steps they need to employ, depending on the readiness and development of the staff. There are lots of good suggestions and ideas for leading the entire process, but principals have the ability to take the suggested activities and adapt them to their current situation. This would be a good textbook for school administrator credential programs in preparing school leaders for taking on the change process at their schools."

Glenn Sewell

"This is the most comprehensive collection of current research and effective practices for successful, sustainable, school change available. It includes solid, practical guidance on the essential tools and processes needed to take our team’s efforts to the next level, and will undoubtedly become our manual for continuous improvement, districtwide. "

Anne M. Lundquist

"I realized many years ago that school leaders cannot accomplish “everything” they need to without help. That help comes in many forms and various avenues. Sharing leadership through professional learning communities empowers leaders from within the organization to step forward and assume both formal and informal leadership positions with the organization. In this book, you will see how shared leadership can improve your school. "

Dr. B.J. Worthington

"We’ve long known that culture is the “secret sauce” of school improvement—with it, anything is possible; without it, nothing is possible. Yet getting from a dysfunctional school culture to a high-performing one is no small feat. Terry Wilhelm’s book is full of practical tools and guidance for doing exactly that and reflects solid research from Mc REL and others about effective school leadership. This book is a must for leadership teams grappling with what is often the most difficult aspect of school improvement—creating a purposeful community that’s committed to continuous improvement. "

Bryan Goodwin

"The concept of shared leadership is essential to increase student learning, yet the most elusive for school leaders to fully grasp and practice. In Shared Leadership, Terry Wilhelm provides a proven road map for school leaders. This is a must read for anyone who seeks a high quality PLC. "

Maureen E. Latham

"Terry Wilhelm’s insight – rooted in extensive practice, inquiry, and research – brings 21st century educational leadership into realistic focus, while demonstrating the unique and essential qualities of collaboration. The author provides a vision of and practical tools to assist in the implementation of a principle-based, shared leadership model that creates conditions resulting in high student achievement. "

Gregory Kampf