Leveraging Leadership in Every School Role

By Haley Wood, Instructional Coach and Assistant Principal, Warren County Schools, Tennessee

Haley Wood is a 2024 NIET Fellow and serves in a dual role as an instructional coach and assistant principal at Dibrell Elementary School in Warren County Schools, Tennessee. Wood received her Bachelor of Science in Elementary Education from Middle Tennessee State University and her Master of Arts: Reading Specialist from Tennessee Technological University and has a Specialist in Education: Educational Leadership degree from Middle Tennessee State University. Read more about her selection as an NIET Fellow here. 

As an assistant principal and instructional coach in Warren County, Tennessee, wearing multiple hats is part of my job description. Working across the layers of my school - from supporting our teachers in the classroom, leading professional learning collaborations, and meeting with parents - has given me a panoramic insight into how strong foundational leadership practices, like those provided by NIET, can elevate an entire school in the name of student achievement. Though my role can change by the day or the hour, my main focus is simple: making sure both students and teachers have the support they need to succeed. Sharing that with the rest of my team has set us up to make real, lasting change.

In Warren County, the drive for professional growth is evident at all levels. Our teachers seek to refine their instructional practices, and I support them as an instructional coach in field testing and implementing new strategies in the classroom. Our administrators share a deep passion for fostering professional development and instructional conversations while maintaining a broader vision for school improvement. When teachers, instructional coaches, and school leaders move forward with a shared vision and language, the impact shows in the classroom.

NIET has helped establish structures to ensure our instructional leadership and teacher support go hand in hand. Thriving in my roles of assistant principal and instructional coach is due to the same reason any role is optimized with this approach: It builds a cohesive system where every level of a school works together, building the capacity of the team as a whole.

While my assistant principal responsibilities are often operational or focused on safety and student behavior, my role as an instructional coach is focused directly on helping teachers improve their practice. Seeing how both these positions can benefit from NIET’s core practices: Common ground, shared goals and visions, and leveraging the voices in your school, has had a direct impact on how we ensure we are meeting goals on every level. This includes diving deeper into the curriculum, understanding standards, supporting teachers in understanding data, and making action plans. It’s about collaborating, observing instruction, giving feedback, and supporting professional development.

Support for Every Level of Leader

As an educator who works both in the classroom and at the administrative level, I’ve seen a shared commitment to professional development in our school system: Our teachers strive to improve their practices and our instructional coaches work to build their own capacity to support their teachers in one-on-one coaching, lesson planning, instructional implementation, and data analysis. Meanwhile, our administrators seek to build on the foundation of their own experience in the field, fostering continuous improvement through instructional practice conversations and school leader-level decision-making informed by their collaboration with their teachers and coaches. 

Bringing the shared drive for success together has been transformative for our schools, in part due to NIET’s foundational practice of creating common ground. As both an instructional coach and assistant principal, I facilitate moments to bring layers of our leadership together, ensuring cohesion. NIET strengthens skills at every level so that no matter your role - teacher, administrator, or instructional coach - you work within a network of best practices, aligned vision, and goals.

Creating this common ground within instructional-administrative dual roles ties directly back to the core beliefs of NIET and its partners - the strength of developing a common language, and maintaining clear communication among various levels of a school system. Effective instructional coaches engage with teachers to address challenges, while effective administrators have their teacher leaders - both formal and informal - at the table when making decisions at a school leadership level, equipping them with real-time data, feedback, and observations to drive student achievement. Learning to leverage both of these qualities in each of my roles has been one way to establish a direct line from the classroom to decision-making and support our collective drive for success.

A strength of Warren County Schools is that the instructional leadership among schools in our district is very close-knit, a product of various coaches and instructors working in multiple schools at once. Currently, I work to connect my teachers with others within our district, an added part of my administrative role to help expose them to the best practices and instructional development I see in other schools.

Recently, I worked with a group of teachers who had been formally observed by an administrator and received feedback encouraging them to better organize their ELA content and give students more ownership of their learning. After discussing goals for their ELA classrooms, we arranged for them to observe a teacher at a neighboring school known for best practices. Following the observation, I coached them on actionable next steps for their classrooms and made sure to follow up on the implementation, ensuring they felt supported as they made changes. It's this kind of ongoing guidance that empowers teachers to grow and ultimately benefits their students, and much of the work we do is strengthened by our Instructional Leadership Team structure.

The Impact of Instructional Leadership Teams

Supporting administration and teacher leaders in tandem with NIET practices helps us support our teachers in our Instructional Leadership Team (ILT) through clear communication, shared goals for our district and school, and consistent feedback that informs decisions about instructional strategy. 

Instructional Leadership Teams, which are defined by NIET, are designed to strengthen school leaders' capacity to support and coach classroom teachers, provide professional learning, and elevate a positive school culture. These teams unify leaders in the school of varying roles, including teacher leaders and school administrators, to intentionally plan instructional support. ILTs – when implemented well – play a key role in ensuring every student has access to high-quality teaching. With the support of NIET, our district started implementing the ILT structure three years ago, and the impact it’s had on our schools has been amazing. 

This year, we kicked things off with a great back-to-school professional development day that was primarily teacher-led with shared leadership, setting the tone for a more collaborative approach all year long. Our ILT teachers now join administrators on learning walks and gather and analyze classroom data together. We share what we find in PLCs, giving teachers a chance to see what’s working and where things can improve. We’ve focused on the idea that leaders go first. So, administrators and ILT teachers try out new strategies ourselves before asking the rest of the staff to jump in. This has helped with buy-in because both teachers and administrators can share real-life examples and challenges from their own experiences trying out these new strategies in the classroom.

Encouraging common language, engagement through learning walks, and a go-first mentality between our teachers and our ILT helped propel the work in Warren County Schools forward, leveraging all types of roles - including mine. One of the most advantageous parts of working with NIET is that the support is individualized to education leaders while keeping the core of every action, vision, and goal centered around student outcomes. 

Strong Structure Leads to Excellence

With the duality of my role - both as an instructional coach who is hands-on in the classroom, and a voice at the leadership table acting as an advocate and point of communication for my teachers, I have a close-up view of how best instructional practices can bring a team together. When entire school systems are supported and provided with development opportunities like those that NIET offers, it helps give all roles the opportunity to succeed. When our teachers, who are diligent in their practice and instructional growth, are listened to and that feedback is applied at the higher levels of an intentional and responsive school administration, it ensures that all actions have been refined with the intention of best serving our students and setting up our teachers to help them succeed. 

This year of wearing multiple hats has also reinforced something I already knew but now see more clearly: Teacher leadership is vital at every level. At the end of the day, it’s all about making decisions that empower teachers to do their best work for the students who need us all. I am proud to be part of that work every day, regardless of which hat I put on tomorrow.