As CLI shifts its focus to school-wide [1] transformation, it’s fitting that Chief Academic Officer and Director of Professional Development Rahshene Davis understands the mindset of school leaders. A former principal, Davis was named the 2011 Charter School Administrator of the Year by the New Jersey Charter Schools Association last April.
While principal at University Heights Charter School in Newark, Davis worked tirelessly to change the culture of her school, fostering higher expectations and creating an environment in which teachers work together in small groups to improve their teaching through targeted professional development. Standardized test scores at University Heights—which ranked second to last of all Newark district and charter schools—rose dramatically. In her role at CLI, Davis now helps other principals provide similar structures and support in schools throughout Philadelphia, Newark N.J., Chicago, and Camden, N.J. “Having past experiences and common knowledge has been helpful,” she says.
For the culture of a school building to change, principals, professional development coaches and other school leaders must not only buy into new approaches, but also provide training, coaching, and support to ensure that they are put into place by their staff. They must articulate high expectations, develop coherent instructional goals and work with their staff to create professional development that supports them to create a lasting cultural shift within a school building.
In meetings and presentations with principals, Davis focuses on the strategies that help school leaders do that difficult but critical work—strategies that include developing norms for effective instructional teams, facilitating the “fierce conversations” needed to drive change in a school building, and providing effective observation feedback to teachers using CLI’s TELP (Teacher’s Effective Literacy Practices), a rubric of effective literacy practices our organization uses to coach the teachers we work with in our CLI Model ClassroomsTM.
Together, Davis says, these skills are “all in an effort to build a positive, effective learning community to help principals move towards a positive mission.”