Page 7 - 2024_Mag_90-4

Features

Leading Together with Logic

Model Plans: Planning for a

Vibrant Future

By Debbie LeBlanc, Beverly Hall-Maughan, and
Connie Rensink

Since 2017, Illinois State Organization has offered the opportunity for all educators to participate in
a process where teacher leadership and voice in decisions at the local level are encouraged and valued.
Using the Logic Model created by Teach to Lead, an initiative of the U.S. Department of Education,
new as well as established teacher leaders lead the development and implementation of action plans that
directly impact local instructional practices or procedures specific to the needs of their students. The event,
titled Illinois Teacher Leader Summit, has impacted hundreds of educators and thousands of students in
the state.
The Summit invites a team of stakeholders (practicing teachers, principals, administrators, school
board members, community members, etc.) to submit a proposal. It’s important the attending
teams include a practicing teacher and a school administrator (or leader with decision-
making authority). These roles enforce the ideas of teacher leaders being integral to
shared decision making and the importance of administrators’ “buy in” to put ideas into
action. Typically, at least two to four additional individuals are stakeholders in solving
the problem of practice.
The proposal identifies a need or targets a specific local school or
district problem, for example “Fostering Engagement of Minority
Males” or “Strategic Use of the Learning Lab and Intervention Time.”
The planning committee pairs each team with a Critical Friend, an
educator who is considered an “expert” in the area identified as the
local problem. Through work with a Critical Friend, each team develops
and implements a plan to solve the problem. The action plan includes
identifying a problem statement, the root cause(s), short-term and
long-term activities to be completed, a suggested timeline, and desired
outcomes. The data collected will drive the team’s ongoing work, but
other data needed may come out of their examination.

Use of the Model for DKG
Reflecting on the success of this initiative for the past 6 years, the DKG International Administrative
Board approved the use of the Logic Model as the method of training for incoming state organization
leaders this past summer (2023) in Irving, Texas. Each state organization was encouraged to bring the
state president, educational excellence committee (EEC) chair, membership chair, treasurer, and executive
secretary (if she was new to the position) to the training. The premise behind the state organization
leadership training (SOLT) was the use of a successful model to identify a problem of practice and develop
a real and viable plan of action. While working through the plan, these members were asked to consider

Collegial Exchange · 5
Collegial Exchange · 5