Clinical I

Documentation & Journals

Name: Brittany Oakley

Mentor’s Name & District: Wes Wolven - Des Moines Public Schools

Cohort Vision:

Personal Vision: Create educational systems that foster a love of learning, community
involvement, and inclusivity.

Cohort Mission:

Personal Mission: Develop learning systems that focus on continual improve with a goal of anti-
racist education.

Cohort values:

Personal Values:

Clinical Goal #1: ….will demonstrate I understand that the success of all learners is a core
responsibility for school leaders.

Focus: Instructional leadership and strategies for learners

NELP Standards: 1, 4, and 7

Connection to Mission, Vision, and Values:

Possible Activities:
● Review building professional development plan for alignment to building goals
● Analyze district curriculum guide/documents in relation to alignment of Iowa Core standards
● Discuss the principal’s role in curriculum development; participate in a curriculum review
● Observe/conduct walk through visits of classrooms
● Attend PLC meeting
Clinical Goal #2: ….will demonstrate I understand the social and pedagogical implications of special
learning needs and diversity/individual differences.

Focus: Differentiation, anti-racism, and inclusion

NELP Standards: 2, 3, 4, and 7

Connection to Mission, Vision, and Values:

Possible Activities:
● Attend and participate in 504 and IEP meetings
● Evaluate alternative school opportunities and at-risk program
● Interview the district special education or equity coordinator to discuss compliance with state
and federal laws

Clinical Goal #3: …will demonstrate that I am able to work effectively with adults and students to
plan for school improvement via the learning community framework

Focus: PLC/School Leadership Team

NELP Standards: 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5

Connection to Mission, Vision, and Values:

Possible Activities:
● PLC time when assessment information is analyzed
● Data analysis and action plans as a result of this analysis

Clinical Goal #4: …will demonstrate I can identify or ascertain a problem or issue in the realm of
climate and culture and use problem solving and critical thinking strategies (such as PDSA) to improve
the area.

Focus: PDSA implementation

NELP Standards: 1, 2, 4, 5, and 6

 Connection to Mission, Vision, and Values:

Possible Activities:
● Discuss possible responses to teacher/parent emails or improvements to communication
methods
● Observe and participate in administration and board meetings
● Use quality tools and processes to facilitate a problem-solving conversation with diverse
stakeholders (i.e. affinity diagram, consensogram, hot-dot, etc.)

Clinical Goal #5: ….will demonstrate I can identify and improve areas related to my personal wellness
or professional habits as a school leader.

Focus: Wellness/balance/professional habits

NELP Standards: 1, 2, and 7

Connection to Mission, Vision, and Values

Possible Activities:
● Begin or maintain a regular, dedicated fitness activity or routine
● Establish or sustain healthy nutritional habits
● Engage in mindfulness or stress relieving practices
● Identify a professional habit (organization/time management, systems approaches, etc.) that
will help build your capacity and sustainability as a leader

*NOTE: In all goal areas, consider how these areas are supported by management functions and
structures, as well as how they interact as parts of a system.

Clinical I Experience Log

Date Task/Activity Describe CLP Goal Alignment, Time Total Hours on

Connection to M/V/V, or Task
Connection to NELP Standards

9/04- Interviews and FBLA Goal 5, Personal mission Across 16 hours

9/29 paper for 270 Multiple
Days/Times

9/24-9/29 Planning for building Goal 2, Standard 7 Across 6 hours

Professional Multiple
Development around Days/Times
anti-racism
9/15 Des Moines Public Standard 5 and Standard 6 6:00pm- 2 hours
Schools School Board 8:00pm
Meeting

9/21 Des Moines Public Standard 5 and Standard 6 5:00pm- 4 hours

Schools School Board 9:00pm
Meeting

9/30 Des Moines Public Standard 5 and Standard 6 5:00pm- 4 hours

Schools School Board 9:00pm
Meeting

11/8 Des Moines Public Standard 5 and Standard 6 5:00pm- 2 hours

Schools - School Board 7:00pm
Meeting

11/5-11/20 DMPS Feedback Loop Goal 4 and Goal 3 Across 6 hours

Committee Multiple
Days

10/10-11/7 FBLA for 271 Goal 4 Across 16 hours

Multiple
Days/Times

10/15-4/22 School Leadership Team Goal 1 and Goal 2 Across 10 hours

- Committee 3 work and Multiple
book study Days/Times

9/10-4/22 PLC Leader Meetings Standard 1, 4, and 7 Across 10 hours

Multiple
Days/Times

9/3-5/6 School Leadership Team Standard 3 and 7 Across 15 hours

- Meetings Multiple
Days/Times

11/12 District Curriculum and Standard 1 3:30-4:30pm 1 hour

Assessment
implementation meeting
with District Secondary
Math Coordinator

9/1-11/29 AP Statistics District Standard 3 and 4 Across 16 hours

Curriculum Design - Multiple
Semester 2 Days/Times

11/19 Parent phone calls related Goal 4 and Standard 5 3:30-7:30 4 hours
to PDSA for improving
system of learning Commented [1]: Were parents surprised to hear from
you?
1/11 LHS Admin Team Goal 3 4-5:30pm 1.5 hrs
Meeting

1/13 CST - School Tier 2 team Goal 3 2-3:30 1.5

1/13 District Geometry PLC Goal 3 3:30-4:30pm 1

Meeting

1/15 ISASP Organizational Goal 3 3:30-4:30pm 1

Planning meeting -
District

1/15 Racial Justice - District Goal 2 5-6pm 1

Team

1/19-2/16 Social Justice Team - Goal 2 3:30-4:30pm 8hr

Book Study and Reading

1/20 Building Associate Goal 1 2-3:00pm 1

Interview

2/11 Building Associate Goal 1 11:00- 1

Interview 12:00pm

1/25-3/29 PDSA - Collaborative Goal 4 10:00- 9hrs

(Every Cycle with Geo PLC 11:00am
Monday) member

1/30-2/27 FBLE 272 Goal 4 Across 15hrs

Multiple
days and
Times

8/20-5/14 Lead PLC Meetings Across 15 hrs

Multiple
days and
Times

9/8-5/14 Exercised Goal 5 Across 15 hrs

multiple days
and times

3/14-5/14 Meditated with Calm App Goal 5 Across 6 hrs

multiple days
and times

2/27-3/27 FBLE 274 Across 15 hrs

Multiple
days and
Times
Total hours to date:
203 hours Commented [2]: Outstanding work, particularly given
the pandemic!

Clinical Journals

Journal #1 (Due November 15, 2020): How did I use the People Skills and Outward Mindset
principles to develop as a leader, both professionally and in my clinical experience?

People Skills and Outward Mindset adjusted the lens I used when approaching my professional and
clinical leadership experiences. People Skills allowed me to consider my PLC members’ needs based
on their behavioral style. With Outward Mindset I learned to consider the needs, objectives, and goals
of my students when making educational decisions and improvements. I used this new knowledge both Commented [3]: People Skills and Outward Mindset
professionally and reflectively in my clinical experience. really appear to complement one another.

Professionally, behavioral styles helped guide my professional learning community in our work. I
began considering the dynamics of my team and how their behavioral styles need to be reflected in the
work we are doing and the norms and procedures we have implemented. With this knowledge I
developed meetings that better met the needs of my staff by listening and responding to what they felt
would help our team improve. I learned that implementing changes that better aligned with the teams
behavior styles helped us work more efficiently and effectively. We were able to work towards a
common vision and start on the path towards team learning, because all were focused on developing
into better teachers and classroom leaders with continuous improvement as the focus. Commented [4]: Did you team members notice
anything about how you approached the PLC work?
The goal of my clinical hours has been to develop into a better leader. I realize how much I can learn
from the leaders I worked with while reflecting on the hours spent writing content, completing my
FBLA, and participating in building and district committees. The leaders I worked with on content Commented [5]: They all work together. They are like
development were focused on the needs, objectives, and goals of the students and teachers that would your own learning "system."
interact with the content. Completing my FLBA for EDL 271: Leadership and the Profession helped me
to consider how I could utilize the objectives, needs, and goals of my students when implementing a
plan for improvement. Developing a feedback loop for the district helped me learn how people at the Commented [6]: Crucial in any system.
district level consider gathering information from building level staff, so that we can all work towards
the common goals and more efficiently communicate our needs. Reflecting on these experiences
provided me with an opportunity to consider how outward mindset must be present in all the work of
education. Commented [7]: AKA...the system.
Commented [8]: Brittany, I appreciate the deep
There are many experiences from my clinical hours this past semester that I believe will help me reflection you have done here. As our "good friend"
develop my mission and vision as a leader. I learned how identifying behavior styles can help a team John Hattie would tell us, reflection has an effect size
build its capacity. I learned how approaching all leadership positions with an outward mindset can above .4, which is significant. I want to highlight your
benefit the whole. Most importantly, I learned how to apply the method of improvement while focusing comment on the importance of applying an
improvement method with an outward mindset. Either
on keeping an outward mindset. I look forward to continuing with my clinical hours, as reflecting on one in isolation will not have the impact they do in
the experiences so far have provided me with more ideas of how to continue growing in my learning. combination and may, in fact, either serve to do nothing
or harm the organization. We must be able to
operationalize an outward mindset in order to be most
effective. I look forward to hearing more of your
thoughts relative to your clinical experiences.
Journal #2 (Due February 15, 2021): Describe an improvement cycle (such as one stated in the form
of a PDSA) that I was able to facilitate or take part in during Semester 2.

This past semester I worked collaboratively with my Geometry PLC team and an Instructional Coach to
integrate a PDSA cycle into our classrooms. I introduced my PLC to the PDSA cycle during Semester 1
when we investigated the problem of work completion as it related to our learning cycle. My PLC
members decided that having a systematic method of improvement was extremely beneficial and
impactful. They wanted to make it a regular process in the improvements of their classroom. Therefore,
we decided to work through another cycle during Semester 2 with our classes. Commented [9]: Will this be ongoing, do you think?

During this cycle we started by brainstorming potential problems in our Semester 2 Geometry classes.
Once we brainstormed a list of ideas for improvement we identified the problem we felt would be most
impactful for the learning of our students as we changed from hybrid to fully in-person. The decision
was made to progress with a cycle that focused on students safely and consistently collaborated during
Covid.

Once we identified the problem we determined that we would collect student data on the following
questions:
“1. What does collaboration look like?
2. When should collaboration be used?
3. Compare a class where you collaborate and a class you don’t collaborate. How did you feel
in each of those classes?
4. Anything else I should know about collaboration.”
We collected the student responses on sticky notes over a week. Then, we brought them to our weekly
Monday meeting. We placed all of the student responses for each question into an affinity diagram and
determined common responses and themes. What we found from the data is that students want to
collaborate and find that it is effective. However, they felt awkward and anxious about collaboration, so
they wanted to feel prepared to collaborate effectively. From these findings we developed a theory for
improvement and a goal. Commented [10]: Did the student feedback surprise
you at all?
Our theory for improvement was that if we led students in creating clear norms for collaboration and
provided students with opportunities to feel prepared for collaboration, then collaboration would lead to
higher levels of student engagement with the content. The goal of this was to have students begin
collaborating with each to understand new content and not to summarize around their learning. We
determined that goal would be met if students participated and collaborated with others around the
content without prompting from the instructor.

We started implementing our plan by developing classroom norms in each of our individual classes.
We recognized that each class was a different system and needed different sets of norms. Therefore,
each class has their own norms poster that is referred to at the beginning of each class period and during
collaboration. Furthermore, we started utilizing out curriculum powerpoints and editing them to prompt Commented [11]: It also gave each class ownership
the students with the collaborative instructional routine. This serves as a method of communicating that over its norms.
we will be collaborating for the period.
After completing one ‘do’ phase, we identified that it would benefit to collect student data on a
biweekly basis about how they feel the process is working. We are using a plus/delta chart to collect
this data.

After cycling through the plan, do, and study portions of the cycle for multiple weeks we are starting to
develop systems in our geometry classrooms that may become deployable in other classes we teach. Commented [12]: That's great!
We are finding that involving the students in the improvement cycle has provided us with information
that we would not have considered. Also, we are finding that we may find our systems(classrooms)
need slightly different approaches. However, utilizing the improvement cycle allows us to have similar
conversations even if our approaches may be slightly different, because our methods are rooted in the
same process.

Journal #3/Professional Notes (Due May 15, 2021): Provide an overview of my success/growth in
each of my clinical goal areas during Year 1 of the Clinical Field Experience.

What I discovered through my Clinical Field Experience was the importance of common language and
processes between the various roles of school leader. The discovery supported my goals because I was
able to see how the goals should relate to one another, even though the goals related to different aspects
of the multifaceted role of school leader. Realizing the interconnectedness of the goals allowed me to
see how the areas of systems knowledge, a method of improvement and self-care support my future role
as a school leader.
Commented [13]: I was the same way before I began
my own learning journey some 26 years ago. The
Systems knowledge was an area of misconception for me prior to starting the program. I thought I terms "systems thinking" is thrown around a lot, but I
understood what a system was and could define a system. However, I quickly realized that I did not wonder how many truly have a firm grasp of what it
means.
know how intertwined the various systems of a school were and what aspects of those systems were
controlled by the building leader. This realization was guided by work in the first three of my goal
areas. Then, supported by my work in the other two. Specifically, the responsibility of the leader for
student learning directly relates to school leadership supporting diverse learners through equitable
policy and practice. Moreover, student learning must be the goal of school improvement, as I
discovered through my final project in EDL 273. All of these must utilize a method of improvement,
for which I now feel I have through Plan-Do-Study-Act.

Applying the Plan-Do-Study-Act method to changes in the micro level of my classroom to the macro
level of school improvement planning allowed me to develop a common language for communicating
change to customers (students and parents) and workforce (staff and building leaders) within the
systems I contribute. Specifically, implementing PDSA with my students and PLC allowed me to
identify potential problems and develop clear solutions to those problems that were supported by
evidence. I believe this was a significant change from where I once was in my changes, where I used to Commented [14]: And, that's the goal!
“brainstorm” solutions that were haphazard. I now can clearly articulate solutions and develop a plan
for change. Finally, the intentionality of the PDSA method supported my realization for intentional
self-care as a leader.

Self-care is not something that I believe comes naturally to me. There is guilt associated with taking Commented [15]: Why do you suppose that is?
time for yourself when you feel encouraged to eat, sleep, and breathe your career. The Clinical Field
Experience showed me that I need to find more balance in my life. Starting with the interviews for the
first FBLA and through countless conversations with my mentor and peers I realized that the job of
school lead, just like teacher, is not sustainable unless you take time for yourself and family. This was
supported by my PDSA learning and systems knowledge. Specifically, I realized something needed to
change in my life when the log of hours showed what I had done to work towards my other four goal
areas displayed evidence that there was missing time with my final goal. I began reflecting on what
systems could be hurting due to the cycle of missing self-care and realized that there were strategic
changes I could make to be more successful in this area.

Overall, my understanding of systems has supported not only my work towards becoming a school
leader, but my work as a teacher and my personal life. Seeing problems as opportunities and becoming Commented [16]: That's great to hear!!
more strategic with identifying possible solutions has allowed my students, PLC, and building to thrive,
as I become more consistent with the way I communicate necessary changes. The growth I have Commented [17]: Yes...you want to reduce your own
towards these goals is only beginning. However, I feel more confident about my abilities to become a variation.
school leader, as I now have the language to communicate improvement and support the learning of all
students with my systems perspective. Commented [18]: Brittany, it certainly appears that
you have a productive clinical experience. I was
especially pleased to read how you took to hear the
PDSA process and embedded it in your work and that
Assessment/Feedback of your PLC. Your learning from this will serve you well
as you move into a school leadership
role. Congratulations!
RUBRIC Proficient Emerging Not there
The Learning Chronicles learning with …Lists more what the Fails to list new Clinical Grade: A
sufficient detail and explains student did as opposed to learning or big
the significance of the what the student learned. ideas.
learning (why this is OR
important)
…Lists more surface-level
learning such as “I learned
that is important to have a
 The journal connects the good understanding of
student’s learning to the goals Special Education.”
of the CLP. Without paying attention
to the WHY question.
Many sentences begin with “I
learned…”
The Articulates HOW the big On a limited basis Does not apply
Application ideas can be applied when the articulates how new new ideas to
student assumes a leadership learning can applied to future contexts.
position. future leadership positions.
Limited
Demonstrates an understanding of
understanding of the role of contextual issues
differing contexts plays in surrounding
transferring knowledge from school leadership.
clinical moving forward
Makes no
Makes clear connections to Makes little mention of the reference to the
the ISSL Standards. ISSL standards. ISSL standards.

The Writing The writing is of graduate The writing is of good Many errors
school/professional quality. quality.
Strong topic sentences with 2- Rambling and
4 supporting sentences. Paragraphs need a bit of unfocussed ideas.
Sentence structure. development (topic and
supporting sentences).
Few, if any, grammar and
technical writing errors. Errors in grammar and
technical writing.

Systems Demonstrates a deep Can explain the Does not

thinking understanding of system rudimentary aspects of a understand
dynamics system system dynamics

Understands and identifies Can explain concept of No evidence of

the concept of leverage. leverage but not apply it understanding the
concept of
Is able to analyze systems and Conducts a rudimentary leverage
their variations thoughtfully systems analysis
Is unable to
conduct a systems
analysis

Diversity Articulates an appreciation Hints at an understanding No evidence that

and understanding of diverse of diverse ideas and the student
perspectives thoughts understands or
appreciates
diverse
perspectives.
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