How School Leaders at Alexander Central School District Used Self-Reflection to Grow as a Team

What do a superintendent, athletic director, director of curriculum and instruction, IT director, and a transportation supervisor have in common?

If your answer is that they all work at a school, you aren’t wrong. At Alexander Central School District, they found more common ground: they’re all school leaders.

When Dr. Catherine Huber became the superintendent at Alexander CSD, one of the first things she did was replace the term “admin team” with “leadership team.”

“There’s something different about being leaders and bringing in the notion of leadership, and having something like the rubric allows us to develop that common language that clearly articulates what it means to be a leader,” Dr. Huber said.

The rubric she’s referring to is the Framework for Reflection & Growth, which Dr. Huber used to lead her entire leadership team through their annual evaluation process with SuperEval.

Employing the Framework for Reflection & Growth allowed the Alexander CSD leaders to reflect on their practice throughout the school year, plus the collaborative process made them feel like a more cohesive team.

“I opened up this year and I think it’s partly because of the different evaluation process that we have,” said Alexander CSD Transportation Supervisor Shea Schreiber. “I felt more comfortable, like I was part of that leadership team now.”

“I’m doing the same kind of work that the school principals are doing or that our transportation manager is doing or our business manager is doing,” said Alexander CSD IT Director Matthew Perry. “It’s really nice, at the end of the day, to go to the person who is essentially your boss and go through an evaluation that you know they are going through the exact same steps of.”

The Framework for Reflection & Growth is organized by 17 core competencies of effective leadership in four domains:

1. Mindset
2. Personal Qualities/Values
3. Professional Qualities
4. Skills/Knowledge

This rubric helps a leadership team evaluate individual performance and reflect upon achievements and areas of improvement in order to advance personal and district-wide goals.

“I am so proud of our leadership team and the growth that I’ve seen in our team, both as a group and as individuals,” Dr. Huber said. “When I think of how they sat here and could talk about themselves as leaders and reflect on their practice, that did nothing but make me proud that we have developed that understanding of what it means to be a leader collectively and in a way where people embrace what it is that they bring individually in their expertise to the work.”

You can learn more about the Framework for Reflection & Growth, as well as the other evaluation rubrics available to school leaders in SuperEval on our Rubrics Overview page.

To learn more about how you and your leadership team can start using SuperEval, or to see a short demo, please contact us today.

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