Teachers and administrators who want to aim higher in Ector County ISD have two opportunities — the Emerging Leader Academy and the ECISD-Texas Tech Principal Fellowship.
The Emerging Leader Academy lets teachers stay in the classroom while receiving additional professional development.
The Principal Fellowship is more intense, Executive Director of Talent Development Ashley Osborne said.
Those in the Emerging Leader Academy learn about the competencies leaders must have to be a strong campus principal.
The academy starts in June and there are monthly sessions through February.
Educators can apply to be part of the Principal Fellowship and it is job embedded training, Osborne said. The fellowship is 18 months long.
The application window runs through March 4 and the selection process will occur March 7-25.
The fellowship comes through a Texas Education Agency grant. Applicants have to have taught for three or more years, have a valid Texas teaching certificate and they cannot have a principal’s certificate.
“They undertake coursework through Texas Tech and they will earn their master’s in educational leadership, as well as sit for the principal certification exam, as well as their T-TESS evaluator certification, which is just the way teachers are evaluated. Principals have to be certified in order to perform those evaluations. The fellowship takes them through that process and certifies them. So they will have their principal certification, their T-TESS evaluator certification as well as a master’s in educational leadership through that program,” Osborne said.
Osborne said this is for people who are ECISD employees.
“They’re people in our system that are either teachers, or counselors (or) diagnosticians. But they would like to be, and they see themselves being, a campus principal. … We are selecting five participants. It is a very rigorous selection process,” Osborne said.
“Part of the selection committee is made up of ECISD employees and then the other part is made up of Texas Tech employees. We work collaboratively with the university for the final selection of those five principal fellows and whoever is selected will begin the process with a kind of kick off summer institute in June. … They shadow a principal mentor for an entire year. They do not have classroom obligations. They are not a teacher of record. Their job position is Principal Fellow,” she added.
They receive a teacher’s salary, Osborne said.
“They shadow one of our highly effective principals to get that job-embedded training before they actually have the responsibility of being a campus principal and the accountability of being campus principal. They get to learn what it takes to be a great leader before stepping into that position formally,” she added.
The fellowship is the most intensive and best preparation for a principalship that the district has offered, Osborne said.
There are currently five principal fellows. Osborne said they have grown tremendously in their capacity to be a leader in general, but an instructional leader on campus “for sure.”
At the end of this year, they can apply for assistant principal jobs.
“They’ll still go through the hiring process, just like any other applicant would. They’ll apply for a position, be interviewed, and then ultimately we’re hoping that they will be selected. We feel like the program itself gives them an edge, because they’re much more knowledgeable about running a campus than someone that is just coming from university,” Osborne said.
Osborne said ECISD sees vacancies for assistant principals and principals every year.
“… As far as the trajectory of these people, they won’t leave this program and become a principal and run their own campus. They will still follow the career pathway of assistant principal, and then principal, but they are well prepared for both of those positions,” she added.
Osborne noted that they will have a “great foundational understanding” of what it means to be a head campus principal, but they will start as an assistant principal.
Asked what happens if someone decides they don’t want to pursue an assistant principal post, Osborne said there is value in that also.
“… We certainly don’t want an individual to take on that assistant principal role and then figure out that this is not what I thought it was going to be, or this is not where my passion lies. So they do get the experience before ever taking that role on and so there is value in recognizing, oh, this really isn’t what I want to do. …,” Osborne said.
She added that they hope going through the program would increase someone’s drive to be a campus leader. “… There’s a lot of investment in these people to get that certification, to get that master’s degree. We would hope that they would want to continue to being a principal. However, if that’s not their passion, we want them to recognize that, too, and then either remain in the classroom. There are other teacher-leader opportunities as well through Opportunity Culture …,” Osborne said.
The Opportunity Culture website said the initiative extends “the reach of excellent teachers and their teams to more students, for more pay, within budget. Teachers gain time to plan and collaborate, everyone gets more support, and students get high-standards, personalized instruction.”
Although the fellowships last 18 months, Osborne said they will be running yearly.
The selection process includes reviewing the applications, artifacts admissions that the applicants turn in and an interview. A pool of those applicants will be interviewed by the university and they’ll further narrow it down to the final selection with the district’s help, Osborne said.
She added that Texas Tech conducts the interviews.
“For this opportunity, we will make our announcement of those that have been selected on March 28. This is a really prestigious opportunity because we have many applicants and we do have to narrow it down to only five … so to be selected amongst the pool of applicants is really something to be proud of,” she said.
“The five fellows that we have right now are wonderful. They’ve done an amazing job and the campuses while they’re benefiting the fellow by providing them the job embedded professional learning, that campus also benefits by having that fellow there and able to contribute to the campus as well. It’s a partnership, a kind of symbiotic, mutualistic relationship between the campus and the fellow,” she added.
On the Emerging Leader front, Osborne said there are four participants this year.
They will make the final selections for the Emerging Leader Academy in March. The initiative has been in place for
“… Let’s say someone sees their trajectory as being a campus leader and they’re not selected for the fellowship, the Emerging Leader Academy might be a good alternative for them to stay in their current position, but still get that leadership experience, as well as the networking,” Osborne said.
John McClellan, a principal fellow, at Bonham Middle School, said the program is going very well.
“It is very challenging, given that we work normal administrator hours while taking a full load of graduate classes at the same time. The professors at Texas Tech are great and are more than just professors — they are our coaches who carefully grow us into our capacity as future principals,” McClellan said in an email.
Initially, he said, the learning curve was rather steep.
“I felt like I was being forced to drink from a fire hose! Our professors continually encourage us and tell us to trust the process. Halfway through the program, and I am truly understanding what they mean. The program is very challenging, but I could not think of a better way to prepare for being a principal,” McClellan noted.
Five fellows are placed at campuses around Odessa.
“I was drawn to this program because after 15 years in the classroom, I wanted to take on new challenges and responsibilities. As soon as I heard about this opportunity, I immediately applied and had the good fortune to be accepted into the program,” he wrote. “The chance to receive a master’s degree from Texas Tech at no expense to myself while receiving on-the-job training, is very unique and rare.”
Upon finishing, he said he intends to working as an assistant principal at a middle or high school.
“I already carry out most responsibilities that a typical assistant principal does. I feel very prepared for my next step with Ector County ISD, which is amazing considering that I began only eight months ago,” he said.
