Implementing the Instructional Vision: Minooka High School

Christopher Tagler

Department of Education, American College of Education

LEAD 5233: Cultural Leadership

Dr. B. Courts

December 7, 2023
 The implementation of the proposed instructional vision for Minooka Community High

School builds on measures already in place. Although there are foundational policies that are in

place regarding collaborative learning, the school currently lacks a defined vision for

collaboration or distributive leadership. The instructional vision statement acts as a blueprint that

will guide teachers, administrators, and students in not just their daily learning, but for the

foreseeable future (Burroughs, 2023).

In 2020, MCHS administration began to encourage teachers to insert more student-led,

project-based learning into the curriculum. Teachers were allowed to replace traditional final

exams with project-based finals. Collaborative projects were allowed, as long as they concluded

with an assessment or reflection from each student in order to gauge comprehension.

Options that teachers can have can include, but not limited to, bellringer or exit activities

that create free thought and sharing of ideas. In addition, projects can have student teams form

a “battle plan”, which can include elements such as job responsibilities, deadlines, and

consequences for not meeting obligations. Teachers can present open-ended problems that

students are required to collaborate, solve, and present findings. Students will check each

other’s work in order to learn from the entire class, not just their group. Throughout the process,

teachers will have to adjust their roles, serving as consultants more than issuers of content. The

anticipated result will be student independence, promoting freedom of expression of ideas,

improved understanding of others, more developed communication skills, which allows for

greater depth of learning (Coban & Atasoy, 2020).

Allowing all groups of the school community to factor into decision making, while giving

students ownership of their education, will help students grow creatively and communicatively,

while increasing student engagement and performance (Pierro, 2020). Ultimately, the

combination of collaborative learning and distributive leadership will lead to MCHS establishing

a culture of achievement.
 References

Burroughs, S. (2023, January 4). Articulating an Instructional Vision for Your District.

ASCD. https://www.ascd.org/blogs/articulating-an-instructional-vision-for-your-

district

Pierro, J. (2020). Using distributed leadership to impact student achievement

(dissertation).

Çoban, Ö., & Atasoy, R. (2020). Relationship between distributed leadership, teacher

collaboration and organizational innovativeness. International Journal of

Evaluation and Research in Education (IJERE), 9(4), 903.

https://doi.org/10.11591/ijere.v9i4.20679