Division Head Assessment Device

The various assessment tools that I distributed as part of my NAIS Fellowship of Aspiring Heads were hugely helpful in identifying areas of professional and personal growth to focus upon this year. And, one of the ways I identified to measure improvement in my work towards those goals - improving my communication, recognizing what's right, improving my EQ, and improving my leadership of meetings - was by having the 21 faculty and staff I supervise assess me on these (and other) areas of my leadership.

To create this tool, I asked members of my Fellowship cohort to send me any devices they used, and reviewed the collected examples for categories and approaches. I then took one I liked especially, and edited it to better fit my precise scenario. One important change, helpfully suggested by Mitch  (our Head of School), was to use the language of progress reports and assessments that we use with children - mastering, effective, competent, developing, and emerging.

The device has six sections: a mission-based approach, division administration, work with individuals and teams, curriculum and instruction, personal leadership characteristics, and open-ended responses. You can click here to see the assessment device. My plan is to gather this data over the next few weeks, aggregate and analyze it for patterns and narrative threads, and then present those findings, and some targeted professional and personal development goals for next year that arise from those findings, at a faculty meeting during our work week in June.