Texas Takes the Stage: NIET Educator Leadership Panel Q+A

A hush fell over the ballroom in San Antonio as a panel of educational leaders, rich in experience and honed in their craft, filed onto the stage at the final regional summit session to close out TX IMPACT, a federally funded grant including three districts across the state of Texas - and of course, NIET.

Principal Deborah Revels of Crockett High School (Crockett ISD), Principal Derrick Floyd of Gladewater High School (Gladewater ISD), Executive Master Teacher and NIET Fellow William Mock of Somerset High School (Somerset ISD), Principal Mary Rodriguez of Barrera Veterans Elementary School (Somerset ISD), and Christy Carter, Master Teacher at Gladewater Primary School (Gladewater ISD), joined hosts Carrie Pullins from NIET and Sheila Collazo, Deputy Superintendent of Somerset ISD for a conversation focusing on the positive shifts they saw within the past three years in the grant, particularly related to instructional leadership teams and cluster meetings.

Here’s an exclusive listen-in to the panel, and how these leaders reflected* on their district’s growth over the past three years:

* Responses have been edited for clarity

Q: What impact has cluster learning had on leader effectiveness, teacher effectiveness, and student outcomes?

Mary Rodriguez, Principal of Barrera Veterans Elementary School:

We are outperforming our state in math, reading, and writing. So cluster has had a big impact on how our students are performing. When I look at the impact that has on our leaders, including myself and my teachers, it is about the relevance that it offers. When we sit in on cluster, we hear what they're focusing on. And it's very differentiated based on what the teacher needs. Knowing the needs of each teacher helps me know what to look for when I go to teacher A, teacher B, and teacher C. And for teachers, that kind of relevance in the work that they're doing in cluster, they can then implement that work that same day or the next day in the classroom.

Just last week, our reading team was focusing on annotations in cluster and our special ed teacher was in there. Then, our Master Teacher went into her room and she was already having kids working on their annotation as they were reading to monitor their comprehension. So relevance is a big impact that cluster learning has for us on campus, and we see it in our student performance.

Executive Master Teacher & NIET Fellow William Mock of Somerset High School:

When I think about the impact of cluster meetings on leader effectiveness, I think back to NIET’s Summer Institute this year. If you attended, you might remember those three big key components for leader effectiveness - trust, knowledge, and credibility. So as a leader, it's important I know how to best support that particular teacher through those key components.

When it comes to teacher effectiveness, I overheard a conversation about how we empower teachers. One example of how I do that when presenting cluster is a CTE teacher of mine, who has been in the industry as an EMT most of her life. When she attends cluster, she says, I'm excited to learn about cluster because I have all this content knowledge, but I don't have the teaching pedagogy to know how to implement it for my kids. So how do we as leaders, admin, masters, and even mentors, ensure we are all empowering these industry-embedded teachers to grow and be effective through cluster learning? If our leaders and teachers benefit, then the student outcome and results will show once we support both of those levels of the campus.

Christy Carter, Master Teacher at Gladewater Primary School:

The decisions that we make as leaders on our campus are based on the best practices that we see in cluster, as well as our teacher and our student needs. When we talk about our teachers on our campus, we collaborate and we empower our teachers to feel like leaders. We provide those qualities to those teachers so that they feel part of our process. What this has done is not only empower our teachers and our leaders, but it has empowered our students. It increases accountability on our campus, so we collectively shared the data. This is not just my data, this is not first-grade data, this is GPS data. So overall, we've seen an increase in student outcomes. We're seeing a positive impact in student behavior. We're seeing overall just the well-being of our kids and our teachers, and we together shared that collective goal. These are our kids, this is our data.

Q: What are the key components in the successful implementation of an instructional leadership team (ILT)?

Sheila Collazo, Deputy Superintendent of Somerset ISD:

When I think of the key components of ILT, we know that instruction is at the very core of our work. Having high-performing instructional leadership teams is paramount. I want to start with consistency in meetings. Our instructional leadership teams meet weekly and there is a specific cadence that happens with that work. The next one is very defined roles and responsibilities. We have administrators at the table, Master Teachers at the table, and Mentor Teachers at the table. Everyone there plays a critical role in the success of the ILT. Another one is that the ILT is student-centered and data-driven. Everything we do is based on data, teacher data, student data, classroom data, and campus data. And that data helps drive decisions and the work of ILT.

Our main function - because we know that the quality of the teacher in the classroom determines the quality of instruction and student outcomes - is to build teacher capacity. This comes with questions: What do we do as ILT members to build teacher capacity so that we have a highly effective teacher in every classroom? How do we hold each other accountable for the work? How do we take that work back out to career teachers? How does the work come back to the ILT so that we process it and it becomes this recursive process back and forth? The ILT is the most important team on that campus with very clear functions and responsibilities that ultimately drive student outcomes.

Q: What impact has ILT had on leader effectiveness, teacher effectiveness, and student outcomes?

Principal Deborah Revels of Crockett High School:

I was at the elementary school last year before starting at the high school. As for me as a leader at the elementary, I was transparent with my team. I collaborated with them on how to identify the needs. I figured out, you know what? I don't need to know it all. I had a team to back me up and the team had a growth mindset. So it made it so easy to make the transition.

To have effective teachers, we needed to coach them. We looked at our walkthrough data and our previous data the year before and determined what the need was on the campus. So we started a coaching cycle. During our ILT, they coached teachers and they brought it back to the ILT where we discussed it as a team. We started seeing the teachers doing that cluster transfer. And it was just fabulous. I was just so amazed at what they were doing.

I knew that our teachers were starting to get more effective because we looked at our data. The data was starting to grow. Were we making great strides? No, but we were just beginning. So any little bit, we were so excited about. Our teachers started to bring student work in because you're coaching them, but is it making an impact on the student work? Let's analyze that next. So we started analyzing the student work. Again, I started seeing my Master Teachers, my Mentor Teachers eager to get back in that classroom and help one another. I could go on and on. I was just so excited on the elementary campus. And it's going to happen on the high school campus too. I know it.

Principal Derrick Floyd of Gladewater High School:

We saw the impact that ILT and cluster meetings have had on student outcomes. Our campus was a D campus and we improved that to a B campus. So the impact, it's already been stated by my colleagues up here: it is aligned and it is focused. We always talk about students and growing teachers. And doing that really puts everything in perspective at the correct time, on time as well. So from a D to a B, collaboration was our key component. That had the biggest impact. In the rubric, we always talk about students having equitable access to other educators. Within the ILT and our leader meetings, we also have that needed collaboration and equitable access over the school teachers as well. We take that one effective teacher, we take their ideas and we can spread that throughout the campus. So students are not just looking for that one teacher, they get that quality education experience with every teacher. We do that of course through our ILT, we learn it in clusters, we prove it, and we solidify it in those meetings.

Bridging Success from Today to Tomorrow

Though the five leaders guided the panel discussion, the educators in the audience took part in the moment as well. After each question, participants were given time to reflect individually, before hearing responses from the panel. Each table discussed their reflections and the panel response, processing the questions through the lens of their own unique experiences and what may lie ahead for their own school systems. At the end of the panel, participants were encouraged to respond to three reflective questions:

• What are three things that resonated with you today?
• What two new ideas would you like to start as a result of new learning today?
• What is one next step you will take as a result of this session?

“As we conclude this phase of the TX IMPACT initiative, it is essential to look forward. The impact of this grant extends far beyond today’s event — it has laid a foundation for ongoing progress in education across your communities,” NIET’s Senior Director of Services Patti Cruz said to close out the panel session. “The systems and structures you have put in place are not endpoints but stepping stones towards further growth and improvement.”

About TX IMPACT
For the past three years, NIET has worked closely with three districts across the state of
Texas through a federal TSL grant, named TX IMPACT. Through the grant, Crockett Independent School District, Gladewater Independent School District, and Somerset Independent School District worked to address the unique needs of their own districts through evidence-based strategies including establishing teacher leader roles and ILTs, providing professional development, implementing research-based rubrics, and creating a performance-based compensation, all with the end goal of enhancing student success and fostering stronger collaborative environments.