The Liberty Elementary Story

Abstract

Principals play a major role in uniting faculties into collective action to improve teaching and learning. Researchers have found that schools that function as teaching and learning communities are successful in raising student academic achievement. To create a learning community, principals must transform their school cultures from places of isolation to sites for collaboration so that teachers work interdependently to learn with and from each other to help all children succeed in schools. In this case, principal preparation students are challenged to devise a 5-year leadership strategy and a 5-year school improvement plan that a new principal might use to improve student learning.