As the first Director of Teaching and Learning at Georgetown International Academy (GIA), a rapidly growing international school in Georgetown, Guyana, I have had the privilege of guiding the school through a period of significant transformation. Over the past four years, GIA has experienced a remarkable 250 percent increase in student enrollment, attracting students, teachers, and families from around the world. This rapid expansion has brought both exciting opportunities and considerable challenges.
Because this kind of growth and change is often challenging for schools, I was not surprised to learn that student learning was inconsistent and not meeting international expectations. Our standardized testing data was stark and those external results were reinforced by frustrated student and family survey data. The school was struggling with its primary mission of educating students. Many parents blamed the teachers and the teachers blamed the administration all while the students struggled to thrive.
As I explored the school’s context, I was reminded of research by the Gallup organization, which highlights a common challenge in organizations—whether schools or businesses—that focus on fixing weaknesses rather than building on strengths. Gallup’s research consistently “shows that developing people's strengths leads to significant increases in performance, along with greater engagement, wellbeing and, …results” (Buono). In our context, this insight was particularly relevant, as GIA's team of local and international teachers came from diverse backgrounds with varied training and teaching approaches. Low levels of trust between teachers further complicated the situation, making it crucial to approach professional development in a way that fostered collaboration rather than focusing on perceived deficiencies.
A key turning point came when we decided to adopt the Danielson Framework for Teaching, which provided a structured approach to improve the quality of instruction at our school. Through this framework, we identified several actionable strategies that we implemented during the 2023-24 school year. These strategies not only helped clarify expectations for teaching quality but also fostered a stronger, more cohesive learning community. Three specific elements were particularly helpful in creating a sustainable culture of learning and leadership.
Identify Your Lead Teacher Learners
Paramount to our work was to identify teachers who were ready to serve as lead learners for our community. The small size and culture of the school meant that it had not identified teacher leaders in the past. We began a semester-long individualized learning journey using curriculum planning as the vehicle to find these lead learners. Each teacher, K-12, met with me bi-weekly to plan and implement a standards-based Understanding by Design unit. The expectations were universal, but the entry point was varied and individualized. This approach created the conditions for teachers to be learning and growing rather than simply complying, and it allowed me to identify common ideas and approaches across our varied teachers. Through the process, I also found those teachers who were the most interested in learning and growing their teaching skills and understandings which were not based on my first impressions or on biased or culturally naive views of them.
Define Teacher Leadership
From my experience, the roles and responsibilities assigned to teacher leaders are often not focused on their primary work, teaching. They easily get bogged down and misfocused toward what are seen as pressing needs for the school but distract them from their most important roles in the school. As an example, they are brought together to debate and make decisions about school procedures rather than engaging in collaborative inquiry around assessment and feedback. I don’t believe that the intention is to keep these teacher leaders from leading learning, but rather, a purposeful focus fails to get embedded into the leadership culture of the school.
We researched teacher leadership models, wrote, debated and drafted various job descriptions and tested those prototype descriptions with those teachers who had displayed curiosity and readiness to learn. One final and deliberate decision we made to avoid the pitfalls of other teacher leadership models was to assign those teacher leaders to me, the Director of Learning, rather than to the divisional principals. By the time we invited teacher leaders to these positions, they understood the vision and purpose of their leadership for the school.
Identify a Framework
Finally, we knew we needed a clear purpose or framework to guide this new work. The Danielson Group and their Framework for Teaching became that organizer for us, but there are other frameworks that may work for your school. Teams of teachers were already engaged in exploring our school vision of a student learner (think graduate learner profile) as well as working to define what quality instruction was going to look like in our South American context. At first, the four domains and twenty-two competencies of the Framework for Teaching seemed overwhelming and too broad to apply to our context, but we decided to invite The Danielson Group to our school to introduce the framework to our lead learners with the charge that they help us select a few targeted and purposeful competencies to serve as our school’s “North Star;” as our vision of quality teaching. In the end, we selected three interrelated competencies that stand now at the heart of our school.
By placing teachers at the forefront of our learning journey, we transformed the culture of Georgetown International Academy. This approach not only fostered professional growth among our educators but also directly contributed to improved student outcomes. The results of these intentional efforts are already visible in our classrooms, where collaboration, ownership, and a shared commitment to excellence are flourishing. I believe these strategies are adaptable to schools facing similar challenges and can serve as a blueprint for creating a sustainable culture of learning and leadership. I encourage you to consider how empowering teachers as lead learners can reshape your school’s trajectory and create lasting, meaningful change.
References
Buono, Dean Jones and Jessica. “To Unleash People’s Strengths, Help Them Manage Weaknesses.” Gallup.Com, Gallup, 2 Nov. 2021, www.gallup.com/cliftonstrengths/en/266435/unleash-people-strengths-hel p-manage-weaknesses.aspx.
Mark Hillman is the first Director of Teaching and Learning at Georgetown International Academy in Guyana, South America. He has worked at schools in Tanzania, China, Saudi Arabia, Brazil, and the United States of America before arriving in Guyana.
