We are doing a lot of professional learning around Collective Efficacy. Just wrapped up several learning sessions with our building leadership teams. We studied and discussed the 4 sources of Collective Teacher Efficacy (CTE), and the 5 enabling conditions that can lead to the aforementioned sources. As I’ve mentioned before we are using Leading Collective Efficacy by Jenni Donohoo and Stefani Arzonetti-Hite. We highly recommend this book!
One of the sources of CTE is ‘affective states’. Affective states can be negative or positive. We focused on the positive ones.
Turns out that working together, “collaborations where peers supported each other helped to diminish the effects of negative emotions and heighten the effects of positive emotions on efficacy.”
Our district just published its new ‘Strategic Direction’ document, after an extremely thorough series of listening and input sessions from stakeholders in in our community and district. Our Mission Statement is, “The mission of Fife Public Schools is to be equity-focused and committed to success for all, including dismantling barriers for historically marginalized groups. Recognizing, celebrating, and embracing the diversity in our students and staff, we will…
Two items at this point. First, note the bold all in the mission statement. That is emphasized on purpose. All. Second, what follows the mission statement are 4 bullets, listing our 4 goal areas.
Goal area number two is ‘Foster Staff Collaboration’. The team then identified ‘Pictures of Success’ for each goal area and for students, staff, families/caregivers.
The Pictures of Success for staff include:
- Staff demonstrate strong collective efficacy with a lens for supporting all learners
- Staff function as teams rather than groups of individuals
- Leadership is the shared responsibility of all staff
Our Strategic Direction is just that. Our direction. Our journey. And the path to our journey includes all in our district, an expectation of collaboration, shared leadership, and collective efficacy.
The Lighting of a Fire 