Professional Credo  

 
As an Instructional Leader, it is important to develop trust with the 
people that you work with through compassion, understanding, 
patience, credibility, influence and integrity.   
It is important to lead by example and strive to make a difference 
in the lives of your staff and students that you serve. Having a sense of 
connectiveness, modeling empathy and appreciating others is important 
to creating a environment of character. In order to lead, you need to 
read. It is imperative to be a catalyst for developing high quality 
instruction, and model the use of a reflective practice for 
decision-making and solving problems of practice.  
  
You are often part of the team that guides the rudder on the ship 
that will determine the instructional course that your school will take for 
the year, make sure to involve staff in developing goals and a purpose 
for your ongoing professional learning communities early on in the year. 
It is important to remember what it was like to be in the classroom. Stay 
connected with the students and keep a pulse on the needs of the staff. 
It is important to foster a collaborative culture. Leverage team 
members strengths, build cohesion and communicate expectations 
clearly and often. 
 
Use research to improve not only the learning for teachers but 
also for students. Use student work and assessments to help facilitate 
improvements to instruction. In order to promote professional learning, 
it will be important to think about putting structures in place to focus the 
learning. Remember, the people doing the talking and are doing the 
learning! One cannot truly learn about the practice of teaching without 
taking action and then reflecting on those actions. Be sure to be mindful 
of sustain learning over time and revisit the learning opportunities and 
look for the transfer into their classroom work. Rich professional 
learning should push and challenge our thinking and beliefs , allowing us 
to achieve greater clarity and understanding of the process. This 
means in part that your time together with colleagues should be full of 
questioning and exploration.  
 
Your job is to create a culture of thinking for teachers so that those 
very same teachers may in turn create cultures of thinking for students 
in their classrooms. You will need to help with this ongoing cycle of 
questions, exploration, unpacking the learning process, receiving 
feedback and then starting the process all over again. Continuous 
learning is key for ongoing educator effectiveness, and learning in 
communities is vital. 
 
You must be vigilant about creating a culture in which staff and 
students feel safe, seen, heard and respected. Each member of this 
community deserves a place to be vulnerable and most importantly a 
place to belong. Some students come to school to learn, others to be 
loved. This is why it is so important to build students’ sense of identity 
and confidence in their ability to learn, overcome challenge, and 
influence the world around them.   
 
Life is about discovering who we are; leading is about striving to 
become better than we are, and helping everything and everyone 
around us to become better too.