Wednesday, November 2, 2011

Welcome to my Professional Growth Plan!

Welcome to my Professional Growth Plan.  My name is Cale Birk, and I am the Principal at South Kamloops Secondary School in the Kamloops-Thompson School District in British Columbia, Canada.

The format for this plan was borne out of The British Columbia Principals' and Vice Principals' Leadership Standards Document and a series of discussions with a fellow administrator in my School District named Greg Hall.  Greg came to our district from Western Australia, where he was a teacher and then department head. He put me on to an interesting document that is used there for teacher evaluations.  The Department of Education and Training for the Government of Western Australia created a document called a Competency Framework for Teachers that has influenced my thinking about evaluations for teachers, administrators, and students.  And while there have been a number of other competency documents created in Canada and the US, I found the framework from Western Australia to be very appealing.

At first glance, there were a few things that I liked about the process outlined in this document;
  • it utilizes competencies and skills that are collaboratively developed by different partner groups, including those being evaluated
  • it strives to take into account different learning contexts and experiences
  • it has an emphasis on personal growth, reflection, and self-actualization
  • it allows for a personalized approach for presenting artifacts in each of the skill domains
  • it can enable a rich and meaningful dialogue between the person being evaluated and the evaluator

A self-reflective model in which I get to present the evidence that I feel best reflects my growth in certain areas is one that has a great deal of appeal to me.  As a result, in using the BCPVPA Leadership Standards document, I have tried to develop a dynamic, reflective and interactive tool in which I can store and describe different forms of evidence according to the standards of good practice that my peers have developed.  This tool has several goals for me and my Professional Development:
  • to find and prioritize areas that I need to focus on for improvement
  • to clarify areas in which I am more proficient
  • to get feedback from my school community partner groups and my PLN on my areas for growth
  • to have learned a number of new web technologies through the development of this tool
  • to share the tool with other administrators so that they may be able to use/adapt/improve the template for their own reflection
So with that introduction, please feel free to peruse this site, to utilize any piece that you wish for your own professional growth, to comment on areas where you think I can improve, or to suggest ways in which this tool could be improved to better document the professional growth of a school-based administrator.