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Reflections on
Professional
Standards of
Educational Leaders

Thomas DeMartinis
Plainview-Old Bethpage John F. Kennedy High School
LIU Post Administrative Cohort
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Reflections on Professional Standards of Educational Leaders

Standard 4: Curriculum, Instruction, and Assessment

Effective educational leaders develop and support intellectually rigorous, culturally
relevant, and coherent systems of curriculum, instruction, and assessment to promote all
students’ academic success and well-being.

My Internship focused heavily on the development and implementation of new

curriculum. There were three separate curricula that I wrote alongside my colleagues during the

summer. This summer curriculum writing project included revisions to the Economics

Curriculum, writing a new curriculum for the 12th grade government course, and expanding upon

our News Literacy program within the Social Studies Department. My Internship project also

was also based primarily around preparing the Social Studies Department for the upcoming

Civics Pathway to graduation that is being implemented by New York State Education

Department.

Through these experiences, I learned a great deal about the entire process of curriculum,

instruction, and assessment systems. The first project that I was a part of was the writing of a

new 12th grade government course entitled, “Contemporary Social Issues.” This course was a

redesign of two government courses labeled “Crime Law” and “American Social Issues.” My

cooperating advisor began this process by discussing the need for a new senior course that

adequately reflects the changes to the Social Studies Framework that had taken place. We

acknowledged that our 9th through 11th grade teachers had been implementing this new

curriculum to better prepare are students for the historical thinking skills necessary on both the

NYS assessments and life in general, and that it was time our senior course followed in that path.

Contemporary Social Issues is a course that is based on the 12th grade Social Studies Framework
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(NYS SS Framework). We modified our curriculum to expand upon the historical thinking skills

imparted in earlier years, integrate culturally relevant studies like News Literacy, and assess a

wide array of inquiry modeled projects that were designed to put students in charge of their

learning. The end result is a course that was designed to ensure that every student who graduates

from the district, does so by meeting the standards set forth in our Mission Statement, which

says, “…to prepare civic-minded students to productively participate in a diverse and ever-

changing world as self-directed, confident, curious, respectful and empathetic learners” (District

Information).

The next curriculum that was written over the summer was our News Literacy

curriculum. The district was fortunate enough to partner with Stony Brook University’s School

of Journalism to incorporate News Literacy into the Social Studies and English departments.

What we learned in our first year of this project was that News Literacy is Historical Literacy,

and that many of the skills required of each overlap. Over the summer we further expanded the

news literacy lessons that we integrated into the curriculum. Our second goal was to develop a

series of lessons that act as models for how News Literacy skills can be taught within content

specific lessons. Whether conducting a Verification, Independent, Accountability (V.I.A.)

analysis of Paul Revere’s, “Bloody Massacre”, or evaluating the truth and verification of news

reporting of the sinking of the USS Maine, our lessons provided a roadmap for other educators to

creatively and effectively integrate news literacy into content driven lessons.

This process involved a team-based approach of experienced teachers working with our

K-12 chairperson to design and implement curriculum changes. As stated in Educational

Administration: Concepts and Practices, “To guarantee continuity and integration of the

curriculum within and among subjects and grade levels, teachers must be actively involved in the
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curriculum, ideally as part of a curriculum team” (Lunenburg & Ornstein, 2011, pp. 402). My

cooperating administrator and I planned the philosophical and theoretical framework through

which we would construct a curriculum, but it was up to a team of Social Studies teachers to

collaborate on what that curriculum would look like. The framework we used to design this

curriculum very much revolved around Elliot Eisner’s Scientific-Aesthetic Model. Our first

question is always, “What do we want our students to be able to do, both during and after the

course has finished?” By beginning with prioritizing historical thinking skills, we framed our

course around the most recent and important changes to the NYS framework. We then used that

framework in the planning stage as a guide to further refine the content targets of our own

courses (Lunenburg & Ornstein, 2011, pp. 378). Ultimately, this mindset gave me a unique

perspective on this type of curriculum development. We emphasized templates that modeled

student behaviors and skills for specific target areas. For example, our News Groups template

and assessment models how to conduct civic discourse on controversial and relevant current

events. This is one example of many ways we sought to incorporate student skills and habits of

mind into our curriculum writing process.

Throughout the process I saw myself transform from someone who is viewed as a newer

member of the department to an instrumental resource for the curriculum revisions taking place.

I actively thought back on Evans’ and House’s Path Goal Leadership models and the versatility

that a leader must display acting in an educational leadership position (Lunenburg & Ornstein,

2011, pp. 115). Though I am a newer member of the department, my colleagues quickly

recognized my resourcefulness as a liaison of sorts to the administrative side to the curriculum

writing process. I displayed Directive Leadership in the handling of timesheets, schedules, and

payments to the writers. I coordinated between Nassau BOCES and our Central Office to ensure
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that members of our department were paid. In other ways I acted as a Supportive Leader,

listening to their fears and anxieties about implementing these changes in a digital format.

Regardless, the curriculum writing process allowed me to view leadership as dependent upon

environmental factors, and that my actions should be multidimensional and responsive to the

needs of the task at hand (Lunenburg & Ornstein, 2011, pp. 115).

*Standard 5: Community of Care and Support for Students*

Effective educational leaders cultivate an inclusive, caring, and supportive school
community that promotes academic success and well-being of all students.

This Internship provided me with several opportunities to affect change both within my

classroom and within the entire building to cultivate an inclusive, caring, and supportive school

community. Within my classroom, I developed a weekly growth mindset google forms activity

through which students could earn extra credit. The goal of these assignments was to provide

students with an equitable extra credit opportunity that, overtime, could develop grit and

resiliency mindsets in our student population. To affect change within the school as a whole, I

worked alongside building level administration, school social workers, guidance counselors, and

teachers to develop and implement a color-coding system that identifies troubled students and

increase the communication between the support staff that work with those students. These two

projects opened my eyes to the importance of school not just as an educational facility, but as a

place where students can feel cared for and supported. Both projects increased the likelihood of

student success in their academics and mental well-being overall.

I’ll admit, after years of being inundated with growth mindset professional developments

and teacher strategies for implementation, I began to buy into the importance of Carol Dweck’s

work on the subject. I cannot imagine undertaking this program, this Internship, my teaching,
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and advisor responsibilities, and the various other life events that have occurred in the meantime,

without a mindset that allows for continual challenges, and by extension, continual development.

Undertaking difficult tasks with no guarantee of success can be difficult. The problem lies in

motivation. Albert Bandura’s theories on Self-Efficacy highlight this notion that people rarely

attempt to perform a task when they expect to be unsuccessful (Lunenburg & Ornstein, 2011, pp.

89). Self-Efficacy is the belief that a person is capable of performing a particular task

successfully. Reading about this topic led to a lightbulb moment in my teaching and Internship

career. If self-efficacy underscores motivation and is being tied to perceived rates of success, a

student will not be motivated if they feel like they will be unsuccessful; therefore I then need to

change the definition of ‘success’ for my students. This led to the growth mindset weekly

assignment that I provided for my students.

Each week I posted a growth mindset daily affirmation card. Each week my students

would read that card and apply it to some aspect of their lives. They would write a meaningful

reflection on a google forms that I read and commented on. Once completed, they could earn up

to .5 points on a test grade per week, with a maximum of five test points per quarter. When

engaged in these activities and the conversations surrounding growth mindset, the goal was to

create an environment that was free of judgment where students can address the challenges they

are facing and their strategies to overcome them. I quickly found that this style of leadership, as

it pertains to the development of the growth mindset in students, is understood best through a

Path-Goal theory of leadership lens. More specifically, this assignment required me to be

supportive leader for my students (Lunenburg & Ornstein, 2011, pp. 115). The goal was to be

genuinely concerned with the needs, status, and well-being of my students. I treated my students

as equals when engaged in growth mindset activities to highlight the notion that this is
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something that all people, regardless of age, status, or initial capabilities, can do to increase their

likelihood of success. The environment was one of inclusion and honesty, and this assignment

showed my students that I have a commitment to their well-being.

The next piece of the Internship project relates to a building level change regarding

students who are at risk in any one form of their student life. Even prior to the Covid-19

pandemic, there was a feeling among the teachers that there was a lack of communication

between guidance counselors and teachers of students who have personal/academic factors that

are inhibiting their learning. While much of the information that guidance received is

confidential in this regard, there are still conversations that can and should take place between

guidance counselors and teachers to best help them differentiate their instruction accordingly. To

remedy this problem, building level administration, teachers, social workers and guidance

counselors met for a series of meetings devoted to figuring out how to increase the lines of

communication without oversharing sensitive information. What we came up with was a color-

coding system of three tiers that indicates that a student may be having some personal, academic,

social and/or emotional struggles interfering with their schoolwork. For each color tier, there was

a list of helpful strategies that teachers could engage in for a student who is currently in that tier.

Furthermore, contact between the guidance counselor and the teacher has now been established,

so the teacher knows there is an issue and can seek further clarification from the guidance

counselor if need be.

This project underscores the importance of communication and collaboration needed to

create a caring and supportive school environment. Robert Blake and Jane Mouton’s leadership

grid is useful in understanding this project and why it was developed in the way it was. This

approach fits on the ‘Team Management’ portion of the grid. We had a goal centered approach to
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gain high quantity and high-quality results through broad involvement of group members,

participation, commitment and conflict resolution (Lunenburg & Ornstein, 2011, pp. 110). A

project like this required a team approach because of the various layers of people involved in

ensuring a student receives the proper care and attention for their needs. Social workers,

guidance counselors, administrators, teachers and more all play a role in ensuring a student

receives the quality education they deserve. By creating this color tiered system, the building

showed its commitment to creating both academic success and overall well-being for our

students.

Standard 1: Mission, Vision and Core Values

Effective educational leaders develop, advocate, and enact a shared mission, vision and
core values of high-quality education and academic success and well-being of each student.

The Mission of the Plainview-Old Bethpage Central School District is as follows: The

mission of the Plainview-Old Bethpage Central School District is to prepare civic-minded

students to productively participate in a diverse and ever-changing world as self-directed,

confident, curious, respectful and empathetic learners (POB Home Page/Welcome).

We do this by providing the necessary resources and support to:

 create a safe, inclusive environment where all students feel a sense of belonging;

 meet each student’s social, emotional, academic, and physical needs; and,

 engage our learning partners in active collaboration and communication.

Throughout the course of my Internship, I sought to develop practices that carried out the full

value and measure of our school’s Mission Statement. The first way in which I did this was

through creating a curriculum, and by extension, units and lesson plans that create ‘confident,
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curious, respectful and empathetic learners.’ While I’ve talked already at length about the

summer curriculum writing projects our Social Studies department embarked on, individual

lessons within those curricula to highlight our devotion to turning the mission statement into real,

tangible practices. Our curriculum writing for the Contemporary Social Issues was designed with

the Mission Statement in mind. Our goal was to emphasize the importance of being civically

engaged as a cornerstone responsibility of citizenship. My chairperson, two other government

teachers in the department, and I created a Civics Capstone project that emphasizes civic

readiness, mindsets, and experiences (Civic Readiness Initiative). This project has seven

components, all based on the inquiry models passed down from the NYS Social Studies

Framework. Students are self-directed as they create their own compelling question on a

contemporary social issue, independent as they research answers to their own supporting

questions, and collaborative as they present their findings in a research presentation to their peers

(Social Studies Framework). By following this framework, students are gaining the lifelong

skills necessary to stay informed, engaged, and civically aware citizens.

The Mission Statement was also carried out in individual lessons throughout the year. A goal

of our curriculum writing was to create lessons that modeled appropriate behavior when

engaging in the subject of news literacy. We created a weekly assignment called news groups in

which students would be responsible for reading about a topic using the skills developed in our

news literacy curriculum. They would then have a script that they could follow, which models

how to have a conversation about a sensitive, current, and/or controversial topic in a manner that

is responsible, respectful, and empathetic. By teaching our students how to discuss political and

current events, we are modeling a skill that lives up to the Mission Statement’s goal of creating

an inclusive space where all students feel a sense of belonging.

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The development and implementation of both above listed learning experiences happened by

expanding upon Tannenbaum and Shmidt’s Leadership Style Continuum. Whether I was serving

my role as a leader in the curriculum writing project or overseeing my students in their self-

guided Civics Capstone Project, I was acting as a consulting leader. The group members in both

of those scenarios had a chance to influence the decisions made from the very outset. The groups

were invited to expand upon, influence, and change the outcome of those projects. This style of

leadership was important for creating an atmosphere of collaboration, and one in which the

students could feel curious, confident, and engaged.

Standard 10: School Improvement

Effective educational leaders act as agents of continuous improvement to promote each
student’s academic success and well-being.

This year was radically different than any other year before it. The closing of school last

March and the subsequent opening under a variety of ‘hybrid’ and/or remote learning plans

posed new challenges to teachers and administrators. Students, the focal point in any school, had

to adapt to a series of new instructional and assessment methods. It is no surprise, therefore, that

some of the students in our district struggled in their ability to conform to the new policies and

practices. Though POB was fortunate in being a one-to-one district where all students already

had a Chromebook device for a few years now, students were still unfamiliar with a routine that

was comprised almost entirely of digital learning. I, alongside the other members of

administration, worked to create a series of practices and policies that students could refer to for

help navigating a new learning environment.

When we began the school year, our plan was to be operating under every other day

hybrid plan. A-K students would attend Monday and Wednesday for live instruction and L-Z
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would attend on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Fridays were completely digital for whole class

instruction. On the ‘off days,’ students were provided with work to complete that acted as a

supplement to the live instruction. This changed in early October when the district adopted the

hybrid/remote synchronous learning plan. Under this new plan, students on their days home

would attend school virtually by live streaming into the classroom via google meet. This

undoubtedly caused a certain level of anxiety among the staff who felt uncomfortable with not

only the idea of having cameras in the classroom, but also the technological skills to manage the

logistical side of this new platform. I, alongside administrators in technology and Art, created a

one-page tutorial for implementing synchronous learning quickly and efficiently into the

classroom. I then led a staff development on this for my colleagues in the Social Studies

Department.

Another action taken was my work creating a modified one-page, remote learning unit

planning guide. Developed in conjunction with my Chairperson, this guide served as a step-by-

step process for planning in the hybrid/remote model. The purpose of this guide was to alleviate

the stresses that many teachers felt with every other day instruction. Often, they sensed they had

more work to do, modifying lessons and turning them into home instruction. They also voiced

that it was difficult to plan for which lessons were going to be given in person, and which could

suffice as standalone home assignments. This unit planning template was easy to follow, visually

stimulating, and adaptable for any content area. This was shared with our department and then

again at a leadership meeting, where it was distributed to the chairpersons from other

departments.

The synchronous learning model brought with it a series of challenges for which many

were unprepared. Teachers found that students would often neglect the district’s online learning
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policy. For example: students would not keep their cameras turned on, would not always be in

their homes for class, would not have headphones on, and would not participate when called on.

Working alongside building level administration, I developed an Online Behavioral Intervention

form that teachers could fill out. This form addressed only the issues that teachers faced

regarding students and the online learning plan. For traditional problems, like missing homework

assignments or sleeping during class, traditional methods of intervention already exist. Many

teachers felt overwhelmed at the prospect of managing students in person and at home, and this

intervention form was supposed to streamline communication between teachers and

administrators regarding typical problems related to remote learning. For example, a student who

continually refuses to put their camera on will have this form filled out by teachers, and the

Assistant Principals will be notified and follow up with that student. It reduced the time it takes

to write out an email or emails because of the sheer number of students who have one or more of

these types of issues with the remote platform.

Another problem we experienced was the reported cheating that students participated in

during home instruction. This is, simply put, a time when the technology for preventing cheating

has not caught up to the technology that allows students to cheat. Our goal was to create an

honor code that we could share with our students to alleviate the small- and large-scale cheating

that was taking place. By sending this home and having both our students and their parents sign

it, we are hoping to prevent cheating among students who might otherwise look to do so.

Furthermore, even if we cannot simply prevent cheating across the board, this honor code is a

good reminder to the students and parents of the community that the district is not sitting by and

tacitly accepting the status quo.

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All these above policy and practice changes were designed to better our staffs’ and

students’ ability to adapt to the new realities of teaching and learning during a pandemic. These

gradual improvements were undertaken with care and respect for the overall goal of our school

district, and I am happy to have been able to do my part in their development and

implementation.
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References

“Civic Readiness Initiative.” New York State Education Department,

www.nysed.gov/curriculum-instruction/civic-readiness-initiative. Accessed 31 Oct. 2020.

CIVIC READINESS INITIATIVE BOARD OF REGENTS COLLEGE, CAREER, AND CIVIC

READINESS WORKGROUP. 2020.

“District Information / Welcome.” Http,

www.pobschools.org/domain/4#:~:text=Mission%20Statement%3A. Accessed 31 Oct.

2020.

Lunenburg, F. C., & Ornstein, A. C. (2021). Educational administration: Concepts and practices.

Los Angeles: SAGE.

New York State K-12 Social Studies Framework.