Special Events-Project LEAD
 
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Mission & Goals

Not just believing! LEADING

Mission and Goals of Project LEAD
(Leadership Education and Development)


Mission
The mission of Project LEAD, funded by the Helen DeVitt Jones Foundation, is to develop middle level teacher candidates and beginning teachers who will have a smooth transition into their own classrooms because they have developed the leadership attributes that will enable them to make a difference in their classrooms, their schools, and their districts and which will enable them to stay in the teaching profession long term. Project LEAD also seeks to enhance the leadership attributes of inservice teachers who will work with LEAD teacher candidates in field placement and student teaching.

Rationale
• 50% of certified teachers drop out of teaching before the end of the fifth year. Some of the reasons are as follows:

Limited Support: Limited Connectivity
• Lack of assistance
• Lack of orientation to students, school and community
• Lack of training designed for beginning teachers
• A sense of isolation
• Difficult work settings

Limited Information: Limited Competency
• Lack of good feedback about their teaching
• Lack of a common set of expectations
• Unclear performance standards
• Limited assessment techniques
• Inadequate training of assessors

Limiting Policies: Limited Control
• Omitting beginning teachers in policy making
• Not committing resources to helping new teachers
• Lack of positive relationships between school districts and universities

• Texas needs 42,000 teachers in the next decade—if there are no deaths and retirements.
• As of April 2004, 45% of Texas teachers are considering leaving the profession.
• Texas has 53,000 classrooms in which teachers are teaching out of their certification areas.
• At this time, approximately 50% of the students in Texas classrooms are students of color while statewide 72.5% of the teachers are white; 17.6% are Hispanic; and 8.9% are African American.

Goals
1. Prepare middle-level teacher candidates for a smooth transition into their own classrooms,
2. Prepare middle-level beginning teachers with leadership attributes,
3. Provide an induction experience that will help prevent attrition of beginning teachers,
4. Provide leadership professional development opportunities for inservice teachers who will be working with LEAD teacher candidates.

Description of Leadership Attributes

The most important leadership attributes as defined by the Advisory Committee, composed of principals, experienced teachers, beginning teachers and approximately 30 Teacher Leaders are as follows:

• Competency in academic knowledge base and in teaching pedagogy,

• Connectivity or the ability to form alliances, relationships, and connections, which enables teamwork and partnerships,

• Autonomy (independence, self-sufficiency), which will enable the beginning teacher to withstand the factors that often lead to early attrition.

Conclusions

Teacher Candidates and Beginning Teachers

By the end of the Project, teacher candidates should not only score progressively higher on the attributes of competency, connectivity, and autonomy but should also have a stronger sense of their leadership attributes than when they began Project LEAD.

Teacher Leaders

The leadership attributes of the teacher leaders will be enhanced and strengthened so that they will be more confident leaders in their classrooms, schools, and districts, as well as being better able to develop leadership attributes in the teacher candidates with whom they work.

Opportunities

Seminars and Book Club/Discussion Group

Teacher candidates and teacher leaders will participate in conversations related to the development of leadership skills and particularly those skills related to the middle level learner and middle level teaching. TTU faculty members will facilitate the sessions scheduled across the semester and based on selected book titles, videos, and other text sources relative to a range of specific topic. Seminars will be led by guest speakers, including Teacher Leaders. Seminars and Book Club will work toward improving the agreed-upon leadership attributes in all of the participants: the three C’s of LEAD, Competency, Control, and Connectivity.

Book Club/Discussion Group and seminars will meet at various Lubbock schools, affording opportunities to learn about context-specific leadership implementation.

Timeline

Uniqueness of Project LEAD

The College of Education believes that LEAD is unique because

• It will be developed as a result of collaboration with Lubbock County ISD’s;
• It will target junior high/middle level preservice and beginning teachers;
• It will develop teacher leaders;
• It will enable beginning teachers to be better prepared to succeed because their preservice courses will provide them with the skills to do so;
• It will provide an induction period that will support t beginning teachers

 

 

 

Short Proposal

A Proposal to

Helen Jones Foundation

from

Judy Aycock Simpson, Chair of Project LEAD Committee

Director of Grant Development

Need for LEAD
The College of Education and partners from ISD’s in Lubbock County propose to initiate a project to develop teacher leaders. The College of Education is interested in developing this project because of the desire to help address the critical issues of the teacher shortage and the attrition rate of beginning teachers in the public schools. The attrition of certified teachers (40-50%) during the first five years of teaching appears to be a major cause of the teacher shortage across the nation and in Texas (35,000 to 40,000 in Texas alone). Addressing these issues requires a systematic approach that cultivates teacher leaders during their preservice training and supports them during the transition into their teaching careers. Project LEAD (Leadership Education and Development) for Junior High/Middle Level Preservice and Beginning Teachers will consist of two distinct but interrelated programs: a two-year preservice teacher program and an induction program designed to address the critical concerns of teacher shortage and beginning teacher attrition by developing teacher leaders.

Description of LEAD
Three cohorts of students seeking junior high/middle level certification will be recruited to participate in Project LEAD, based on their perceived level of commitment to the teaching profession at the time of their selection. LEAD will tailor the junior high/middle level certification preservice education courses that these students take to stress leadership skills. Once these students are certified and are beginning teachers in local junior high/middle level classrooms, they will be supported by an induction program, which will help them to implement leadership skills in their classrooms. As a result of stressing leadership in the junior high/middle level preservice courses and in the induction program, LEAD teachers will be better prepared to succeed as educators and to be retained in the profession than will other beginning teachers who do not have this training, for this project will enhance the sense of control and support that are critical to the retention of beginning career teachers.

One important strategy for implementing Project LEAD is for the College of Education to collaborate fully with local ISD’s to develop the preservice and induction programs of LEAD. The College of Education faculty and staff will enlist the help of junior high/middle level principals, their teachers, and some of their junior high/middle level beginning teachers who had no special leadership preparation during their preservice courses to advise the faculty and staff on what the preservice and induction components of LEAD should be. For example, they, along with faculty and staff from the COE, will

• Specify what the term leadership means for junior high/middle level teachers and schools;
• Determine the leadership outcomes that young teachers need;
• Write the mission and philosophy of LEAD;
• Write the goals and objectives of LEAD;
• Determine the type of students to recruit and how to best recruit them;
• Determine how to best implement and evaluate the determined leadership skills in the preservice courses, including student teaching;
• Develop and implement a Leadership Seminar preservice component;
• Plan and implement a two-year induction program that will continue to emphasize leadership skills and will collaborate with district induction programs;
• Identify Teacher Leaders from the schools who will help with induction;
• Develop and implement an evaluation plan.

Project directors will be especially considerate of the time commitment of ISD participants, being careful not to duplicate programs but to participate in district programming that helps further the goals of both the COE and the district and to provide compensation for students and partners in the ISD’s. Mr. Wayne Havens, Interim Superintendent, and Ms. Ann Graves, Assistant Superintendent, of the Lubbock ISD have committed verbally to this project, and we will be receiving a letter of support from them.

The first actual cohort of preservice junior high/middle level teachers will begin in the fall of 2004. This will allow time to develop the partnership with district personnel, to get the items listed above in progress, and to conduct the recruitment of the first cohort. Years 2004-2008 will see three cohorts of 30 each finish their preservice courses and participate in varying times of induction (See Timeline). Assessment and evaluation will be ongoing as will be revisions of the programs given the results of assessment and evaluation.

Timeline & Budget

Uniqueness of the Project
The College of Education believes that the idea for the development of LEAD is unique because

• It will be developed as a result of collaboration with Lubbock County ISD’s;
• It will target junior high/middle level preservice and beginning teachers;
• It will develop teacher leaders;
• It will enable beginning teachers to be better prepared to succeed because their preservice courses will provide them with the skills to do so;
• It will provide an induction period that will support beginning teachers

Future Plans
If assessment and evaluation efforts reveal that LEAD results in greater success and retention of beginning teachers, the College of Education will seek funding to implement the full induction program for Cohorts 2 and 3 and to implement a secondary preservice component of LEAD.

Proposed Budget Justification
The budget goal is to provide as much incentive as possible for the partners, the preservice teachers, and the beginning teachers. Because faculty and staff believe so strongly in the value of this project, neither the Principal Investigators, the Project Advisor, nor the faculty and staff of Texas Tech working on the project committee will receive any compensation for services, such as serving as project director or advisor or the like. A total budget of $33,500.00 is sought for redevelopment of the preservice courses, the development of the induction program, and the coordination and implementation of these programs. This amount equals 16% of the $203,800.00 that is necessary to implement this project. Students, principals, and junior high/middle level teacher leaders and beginning teachers will be the recipients of 81% of the funds sought. The College of Education will commit another $129,237.00 of in-kind contributions to make this project a success.