Anita+Sepp+-+answers+to+questions,+6-7+April

1. As you consider the purpose of the English Language Learner Leadership Academy, “//To build your capacity to assist regular education teachers in becoming teachers of language development in order to implement Classroom Instruction That Works with English Language Learners strategies through Shared Leadership//”, to what degree do you believe your team has been able to achieve this purpose?


 * The District 20 team has worked together to implement our initiatives. We purposed to create a newly formatted English Language Plan for our district and implement the plan for the 2009-2010 school year. Initially, we met to review and assess the plan from 2008-09. Then we worked together to revise and reformat the plan. We published the new plan and completed a plan for each ESL student, implementing it for the current school year. We feel that our efforts were worthwhile, and our team was able to accomplish our objective.**

2. How has your team’s shared leadership approach to the implementation influenced your ELL initiative?

3. As you engaged your colleagues in professional development designed to support them in becoming teachers of language development to implement Classroom Instruction That Works with ELLs strategies, how did you use the leadereship responsibilities to manage their personal transitions (of those colleagues who would have responded "yes" to any of the following four questions) and the implications of second order change: 4. As you reflect on the implementation of your ELL initiative, what leadership responsibilities did you find most helpful and how did you apply them in your context?
 * a break from the past?
 * inconsistent with organizational norms?
 * incongruent with personal values?
 * requiring new knowledge and skills?

Flexibility - we tried to be open-minded with regard to revising our new format of the ELP Focus - we established clear goals and kept them at the forefront**
 * Communication - D20 ESL teachers coordinated with classroom teachers and administrators

5. Do you believe the implementation of your ELL initiative influenced student achievement at your school? What evidence to you have to support your response?


 * We are hopeful that we will see student achievement on the CELA (scores not reported yet). The objective is to see progress of at least 1 level for each student. Other evidence of student achievement is clearly seen on the LAS Links Benchmark assessments given throughout the 2009-2010 school year.**

6. As you reflect on your experience in the English Language Learner Leadership Academy and the implementation of your ELL initiative, what aspects of the experience were most successful and which would you do differently in the future?

7. Do you have evidence of changes in teacher practices or behaviors that you attribute to the implementation of your ELL initiative or the English Language Learner Leadership Academy?

8. As you reflect upon the four English Language Learner Leadership Academy sessions, what concepts / approaches did you find the most helpful? Which one’s were least helpful?