Modeling the Way: My Leadership Credo

I will strive to be confident, truthful, and open within my classroom, in my school community, and on our stage.

I will allow my students and actors to make choices, and I will reward bold choices and risks.

I will determine what I want, using the lessons of the past and previous failures to shape my plans. I will not make assumptions, and I will craft our vision with the future at the fore of my mind.

I will mediate those in disagreement, helping my students and ac

tors to see their commonality in focus and desire.

I will never settle for the status quo, and I will not shy away from addressing areas of concern. I will analyze my progress and process, and adjust accordingly to keep true to our vision.

I will value the members of my team, opening myself up to their suggestions and collaboration. I will trust them and allow them to personally shine at their task. I will remember collaboration is king, and that disagreements are a great starting point for collaboration and conversation.

I will bet on myself, and on the value of my ideals.

I will keep the people in my classroom and theatre program informed, using te

chnology and good "old fashioned" conversation to secure my network and the collective talents of many.

I will publically recognize the successes of team members, and I will never falsely praise. I will maintain tough, measurable standards of rigor.

I will always love my job. I will love and value the members of my team. I will cultivate a family of respect, trust, and mutual success.

Modeling the Way: A) A Tribute to Myself

I am compassionate.

I strive to help students fully express themselves.

I cultivate a classroom where students are safe, valued, and encouraged to take risks.

I know I have made personal connections with students, and that this trust has helped shape our classroom.

I challenge students, maintaining high standards for literacy, integrity, and self control.

I value honesty in my classroom, and encourage divergent thinking and genuine personal and intellectual connections to literature and theatre.

I know I care, a lot. I care in the right way: not always about immediate success, but about lifelong learning and literacy goals.

In my third year at our school, I know I have cultivated a positive reputation.

I have also created a reputation of being a fierce advocate for diverse students, and I welcome the conversation that brings in my school community.

Modeling the Way: A: Make a Plan and B: Make a Model

The Plan: Pre-Production

1. Secure my Production Team

   1. Solicit help from Cartoonists (friends of my husband) and Community Members with excellent reputations

   2. Secure student support

   3. Share my artistic vision and goals for the program with them

2. Share Responsibilities

   1. Set Design, Set Construction, Properties Design and Production, Sound/Light Design, Techs on Deck, L/S Tech, RSM and PSM, Costume Design and Production, Publicity

3. Publicity

   1. Create website: hhsoneact.com

   2. Create goals for advertisement fundraising

   3. Write letters/Petition town for fund support

4. Theatre Festival

   1. Enroll for Regionals as a participating school

   2. Collect medical emergency information

   3. Use stats from Regionals and States stage to inform set design

5. Auditions

   1. Set date, find space

   2. Select monologues

   3. Select panel

   4. Structure callbacks

6. Begin pre production meetings

   1. Set Design

   2. Construction deadlines

   3. Costume fittings

   4. Properties deadlines

   5. Furniture acquisition

      
      

The Model

Solicit and secure crew: Before Nov 5th

Production meeting, full crew: Nov 16th, 4pm

Production meeting, adults: Nov 19th, 5:30pm

Production meeting, Alison set design: Nov 22nd, 2:30pm

Production meeting, Rick construction: Nov 23rd, 12:30pm

Production meeting, Tiana costumes: Nov 28th, 5:00pm

Production meeting, emails with Denis to finalize props by Jan 4th rehearsal

Consult with Matt, publicity, Dec 1st over supper

**Create website to showcase production team, production blog, and show information:

www.hhsoneact.com

I am entirely too proud of this website, Don! I designed it myself. I hope you find it helpful and functional. It also more roundly showcases my "model": the HOW.

Inspire a Shared Vision : C: How I Have Made a Difference D) My Vision Statement, and E: Remain Positive and Optimistic

My goal is to promote literacy. As an educator, it is my responsibility to captivate my students with literature, cultivate their literacy skills and curiosity, foster their critical rationality, and celebrate their successes. My learners are diverse in their interests, backgrounds, learning styles, and needs; all of my learners are valuable and respected members of my classroom community. I focus on fostering a love of learning, as well as teaching my students the effective communication skills essential to responsible citizenship. I have been appropriately challenging my students, striving for excellence, and fostering an environment dedicated to the joy of learning.

In these ways, I am confident I have made a difference in the lives of my students. I see it in their confidence, hear it in their tone as they write, and watch it on stage. I am confident in this difference. I know I have made a difference in the students who spend their mornings and lunches in my classroom, students who felt they needed a safe and supportive place to be and then deemed me worthy. I view it in their posture when they know they have worked hard and earn the natural success of their perseverance. I do not sense the impact by their test scores, although competency is vitally important. I sense it in their personalities, in the fluidness they express themselves, and the personal risks they take to show their ideas to others.

I need to remain optimistic, always optimistic. If I do not, I run the risk of harming children. I run the risk of giving them the message that I do not care about them as individuals, and that is a sin greater than most in the world of education. I cannot tolerate those who are negative while they work with children. I cannot tolerate a child to feel, because of my own actions, that they are inferior. My optimism and idealism is sustained by their creativity and youthful independence.

Challenging the Process: E: Honor your Risk Takers

It is natural to honor risk takers in theatre.

...but students do not always willingly take the risks needed for authentic acting choices.

In order to encourage my risk takers to jump into those risks, I will cultivate a climate of trust and support. I will model by taking risks myself during acting exercises, and by constructively and honestly giving positive feedback--verbally and through my body language--when students take risks.

Not all risks work on stage. But it is easier for an actor to contain, pull back, than for an actor to not have the necessary chutzpah to make the choice in the first place.

Bold actors embody their characters so fully, so truthfully, the audience has no choice but to believe they have always been that person. Bold choices make for natural, intuitive acting.

Challenging the Process: F: Analyze Every Failure, as Well as Every Success and D: Go Out and Find Something that is Broken

We do not use the term "failure" during English Workshop. We use the term "learning opportunity." And yet, for my own teaching, I do encounter my own failure. The purpose of failure is not to dwell; my goal must be to use each "learning opportunity" as just that: a chance for further review, further considering, and a valuable chance to change the dynamic that led to the failure.

Considering my EW students, many of them are, sadly, used to feeling failure. They have, through their circumstances and, at times, their own choices, found themselves in a position of weakness. Some are in trouble with the law (one is currently facing a twenty year potential jail sentence) and some have made their lives infinitely more challenging by becoming parents. And yet, their work ethic is tremendous. They take their constructive criticism, and try again.

My Honors students, however, often settle for the easiest way to avoid failure. They show little work ethic. They've found the way to just barely earn an A, not for the personal satisfaction or the reflection but for the number of their GPA. I've identified this as a problem. It's broken. It is not that they are broken, no, but my service to them needs to be modified. I've identified this as the problem I am going to focus on for my Action Research project.

Enabling Others to Act: B: Create Interactions C: Create a Climate of Trust and Challenging the Process: Put Idea Gathering On My Agenda

I've been blessed to be trusted with the position of Director. In order to secure the climate of trust my students need to perform with honest conviction, I have to cultivate a space where it is safe to be vulnerable and take bold risks. To accomplish this, I know I have to be consistent, clear with my expectations, and treat everyone with fairness and compassion. I have to model the way to treat others, and I have to foster collaboration and intimacy between my students. I have to make the ALL the adults in the programming work to create the same environment, and that we all demonstrate trustworthiness and integrity.

By working with preproduction meetings, I have led structured meetings and informal, over coffee idea sessions. The most productive meeting I've scheduled has been a meeting of just the adult assistants, over coffee and soup at Panera Bread on a Friday evening. We simply pitched ideas. I was not cautious, and I told them that each idea is valid... and we worked through several new ideas.

For example, the idea was made to accent red onstage to demonstrate the surreal nature of the scenes. We decided, through a spirited discussion, which aspects would be red from the stage decor. It was great.. and it was a artistic decision that couldn't have been made without the collaboration of those individuals. If I had been guarded, and only stuck with my own vision, I wouldn't have been able to extend and deepen my vision to allow for their input.

See the bios of my production crew at hhsoneact.com