Monticello High School Observation Report

I interviewed Lewis Whitaker, Principal of Monticello High School (MHS). MHS has 1 assistant principal, 20 teachers, and 268 students’ grades 7-12. The school classified employees include: 5 kitchen staff, 3 custodians, 3 Special Education aides, 1 library media teacher, 2 computer/techno teachers, and 2 office assistants. Four of the twenty teachers have less than ten years’ experience.

A. Procedures to Assess Workforce Engagement: Teachers at MHS are assessed in a variety of measures, including school grade, SAGE tests scores for language arts, math and science, and benchmark scores for math and language arts to see how students are learning. Monticello also does formal and informal observations that focus on the teaching standards form the

Identification of Performance Measures: One of the measures the administration focused on from PBS was office referrals. Principal Whitaker thought if things got more positive, hopefully office referrals would drop, and they did drop by over 40 percent the first year. The administration was encouraged, because office referrals generally peaked in the spring. MHS determined they were on the right path of of newly revised vision statement. Upon further reflection, Principal Whitaker isn’t sure the leadership has identified performance measures regarding progress towards the vision, other than test scores. He commented that test scores show that the school is responsibly teaching students, and have integrity as they do what they know is right, and respect for the students, and their education as they teach them well. Whitaker said: “How are we going to measure our progress towards the vision? That's something I’m going to have to think on (February 22,

Use of Results: Last year the administration analyzed the data from parent and student surveys. Whitaker was disappointed in the data, because the way the survey was written you needed ten responses in order for a teacher to get feedback from parents.Not one of the teachers received ten responses, so he took the surveys and extracted the comments so that teachers could look at the feedback from parents and student. The principal was very disappointed in the feedback he received on himself. Whitaker felt like he was doing a better job than his scores showed, he thought his performance was in the 90 percent range, when in reality parents and student rated him in the 60-70 percent range. This data caused the principal to self reflect and process on how he could make the information useful to his staff. Whitaker recognized there was room for improvement and he needed the teachers to see there was a reason to change, so that they could all improve, he wondered how he could help them realize his findings. The principal created a presentation and held a faculty meeting, in which he showed some comments about himself that he wasn’t required to share, because he wanted to learn, and he wanted the staff to digest from this experience. Whitaker commented:“If were are going to grow as a whole school, I need to demonstrate how I interact with the feedback (February 22, 2017).” Whitaker started with a comment that was glowing positive about himself and he talked about it, then he