Belvidere Community Unit School District 100 (BCUSD) is located in Belvidere, Illinois. The district is comprised of two high schools, two middle schools, five elementary schools and one specialty (STEM) school. BCUSD works diligently to continuously improve the processes and standards employed to provide a quality education to its students in kindergarten through 12th grades. The current focus of some of these efforts include leveraging new technologies in the delivery of educational experiences, developing a reinvigorated core curriculum, adopting standards-based grading, and forming a multi-dimensional team dedicated to mentoring new teachers and supporting district initiatives. The latter, a completely new instructional support group, was tasked with developing the foundation for a highly effective, supportive, flexible and result-driven team in just one year.
Solution
Chartwell Agency was hired to:
- Build an atmosphere of communication, collaboration, respect and trust among the new instructional support team.
- Shape the communications strategies for the instructional support team, ensuring the expectations and priorities of the administration and the team were shared effectively with all relevant audiences.
- Provide ongoing professional development as the instructional team developed during a set period of time.
We started by providing an initial team-building/strategy session to help the new team set goals and expectations for working together. As the team developed, Chartwell was called upon to enhance the team’s collective skills with monthly professional development sessions on topics and issues relevant to effective communication, mentorship, collaboration and building trust with teachers inside – and outside – the classroom. Among the topics were: Positive Phrasing, Building Effective Teams, Managing Multiple Generations, Critical Conversations and Powerful Presentations.
Outcome
The results were significantly impactful and the instructional support leaders established a strong esprit de corps which:
- Created a “safe” forum in which team members had honest and open dialogue about challenges and opportunities.
- Developed a communications strategy for the various audiences with whom the committee needed to share information
- Cultivated a sense of confidence among members that they had the necessary core skills and dedicated support from administration to meet their short- and long-term goals.
