Colleen Miner is the Principal of Lakeshore Elementary School in the Eau Claire Area School District (WI), which serves 11,180 students. Colleen has been the principal at Lakeshore since 2009. Below is Colleen’s story of how she has used the Comprehensive Assessment of Leadership for Learning (CALL) as part of a project with the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction (DPI).

As a pilot participant in the DPI Leadership for Learning Project, Colleen and her school began using CALL in the fall of 2014. She administered the CALL survey and then examined the resulting data, which revealed that an Area of Strength in her school was Professional Learning. These results rang true to Colleen since her school has two full time coaches that spend 80% of their time working directly with teachers. In addition, in that first year of using CALL, the area of Formative Evaluation of Teaching was identified as an Area in Need of Improvement. Colleen elicited feedback from staff on how the school leaders could improve in that area. As a result, Lakeshore Elementary School piloted peer observations for the spring of 2015. In addition, Colleen was able to use the CALL results and resulting work as evidence of her professional growth for both her Educator Effectiveness (EE) portfolio and her professional development plan (PDP) required for renewing her administrative license.

After implementing a peer observation process in her school based on CALL data, Colleen administered the CALL survey again in the fall of 2015. The leadership practice area of Formative Evaluation of Teaching, which was previously an Area in Need of Improvement, was now identified by the CALL system as an Area of Strength. Colleen believes that this change in instructional leadership, teacher collaboration, and teacher feedback was due to the use of CALL. According to Colleen, “the overall results of implementing peer observations has had a tremendous positive impact on our school culture as teachers enjoyed the process and now routinely welcome others into their classrooms.” Colleen and her staff have incorporated the CALL survey results into Lakeshore’s School Improvement Plan as one of the metrics for the goal of student engagement. While Colleen has “graduated” from the DPI Leadership for Learning Project, she plans to continue to use CALL on a yearly basis.