Back to school often brings many changes for students and staff alike. Curriculum Trak is often connected to school improvement initiatives which can often get overlooked in the onboarding process of new personnel. Over the next few weeks, we want to highlight some of the steps a school can take to bring new staff members up to speed when it comes to your curriculum maps and plans. Today, we begin by looking at some tips for new administrators.
Curriculum Trak believes that the strengths of a school’s curriculum should outlast a single teacher or administrator, but we also recognize that technical training is easy to overlook when it comes to passing the baton. A new administrator inheriting the responsibilities of an existing Curriculum Trak account may be left with more questions than answers beginning with, “What is Curriculum Trak, and how do I logon to our account?” If you find yourself in this situation, allow us to offer some insights, both practical and technical, that may help you take over these leadership responsibilities.
On a practical level, previous school leadership probably worked through a process that led them to identify Curriculum Trak as the right tool to meet a specific goal. So, your first step may be to understand what that process was and what goal your school is working toward. It is unlikely that we will know the exact reason why your school signed on to Curriculum Trak, but we do like to offer a few questions you may want to ask in order to understand the specific role Curriculum Trak should be playing. Those questions are:
- What are we working toward? What is the overall goal? Why are we mapping our curriculum? Is this for general curriculum improvement, textbook review, efforts to improve standardized test scores, requirements for accreditation or reaccreditation?
- What is our timeline? When do we need to have data that can be used to achieve our ultimate goal? When will we be reviewing textbooks, meeting with the accreditation team, etc.?
- Who has been responsible for meeting these goals to this point? Are there specific staff people who have been empowered to lead the charge? Is there anyone with hands-on experience and personal knowledge of your Curriculum Trak account and why it was set up the way it is? Have the teachers been tasked with entering their course information or have lead teachers, curriculum directors, or other staff members been entering data collected from the teachers?
- Where are we in the process? How much should we have done at this point, and how does that compare to what we should have done by this point? Are we on track to meet our goal, or do we need to make modifications to our process to get back on track? Are there curriculum mapping and/or review times carved out of the teachers’ daily/monthly schedules? Is this something that may need to be included in our calendar?
These questions may not have clear answers at present, but working to understand this type of information will put you in the best position to determine exactly how Curriculum Trak can be used in the immediate future to help your school move in the right direction.
To assist you with the technical nature of Curriculum Trak, we do like to offer a couple of technical resources for new administrators:
- First, the New Administrators Checklist provides an overview of some of the specific tasks a New Administrator may find themselves needing to do as soon as they login. On the right-hand side of the resource, you will find a list of additional topics to explore.
- Another resource we like to offer is a complimentary New Administrator consult for you and one other person from your school (this helps preserve legacy). This is an online meeting with me where we review your account, walk through all of the current settings, offer you training to complete the basic administrative steps, and answer any questions you may have. If you would like to schedule this, you may contact support to set this up.
Curriculum Trak enjoys participating in the success of schools as they map their curriculum. If you are a new administrator at your school, please let us know so we can welcome you aboard, update our contact records, and continue providing you with the support you may need to continue to be successful.
View us as a resource. Let us know how we can help you get up to speed as you lead your team.
