About me

My name is Ayhan Caputlu.

I believe that sound human resources leadership has a direct impact on school's instructional effectiveness. Correct decisions about teacher selection, induction, evaluation, and growth and development can contribute to improved student achievement.

 

Below is a list of my job responsibilities and some experiences I had in my organization.

Below is a list of my job responsibilities and some experiences I had in my organization.

v  Advise teachers and administrators in curriculum development;

v  Research state standards, benchmarks and make recommendations on curricula, instructional methods and materials;

v  Implement state standardized test practices;

v  Evaluating teacher performance thorough school site visits and make recommendations hold periodic meetings with math department heads under Concept schools network;

v  Plan and organize teacher training programs, conferences, workshops and math Olympiad between charter schools in Midwest region.

Experience #1 Teacher Evaluations at Concept schools

Nature of the Activity:  As the Director of Math Education at Concept School which works with as many as 20 charter schools in Midwest, I have been given the task by our president to visit each schools three times in a year-Fall, winter and spring. In these visits, I perform formal and informal evaluations (second and third visits) of as many as 80 classroom teachers of which majority teaching Mathematics at all grade levels at elementary, middle and high schools.

People Involved: In Concept Schools office, we, academic team-4 people, our Chief Executive Officer, Science, Math and Language Arts Department Heads sit down together before we start our visits to the schools in 5 states for scheduling and planning these visits and discuss the possible scenarios, do’s and don’ts of the visits. After the meeting we acknowledge the Concept School president about the visits and get feedbacks from him.

Roles and Responsibilities: The rubric that is attached to the portfolio, with all fifty items and indicators for each item has been prepared from the scratch by the academic team of three people, Science, Math (myself) and Language Arts Directors. When I go to a school for a site visit, I spend the whole day in the building, visiting 4 to 6 teachers in their lecturing hours, no interrupting, or talking, but just observing and filling the rubric to evaluate the teacher’s performance. Later in the day-generally after the school let out, there is another time setup-20 mins to meet the teachers in their room. If that is my fall visit, I simply give feedback to the teacher, and make suggestions to do better job. In my winter visit, again informal one- after another class visit I sit down with the teacher and see and communicate the progress made since fall. My final visit at spring is the formal visit. This time, after class visit, there is no post meeting.

When I go back to my office in Chicago, I prepare the performance evaluation report for each teacher- as many as eighty in about two weeks and mail it in the sealed envelope to their addressees.  If the teachers would like to dispute any item on the rubric, they can either e-mail me, or send a dispute letter in mail. After I go over the disputed items and resolve the issue by mutual consensus, the decision is final and that report now becomes teacher’s formal evaluation report for that year.

Abilities: Scheduling the tasks, putting them on a timeline has always been two skills I needed to improve. Teacher evaluation process required the whole process to be scheduled way beforehand and stick to it. Out site visits are in five different states, and I needed to contact the directors of as many as 20 schools in these states about two months before the trip so that the directors can work on the day of the schedule for three supervisor visiting as many as fifteen teachers in one school day plus the post visit meetings.

Also, during these visits, going into a room, and observing 50 different items on a teacher with the most healthiest decisions in less than 50 minutes class period is quite stressful and I believe, this job made me more detailed oriented and I feel that when I enter a classroom, I can list and notice a lot of details or defects in less than a minute from checking whether the classroom rules are posted to whether there is enough textbook for each kid in the room.

Potential for Educational Leadership:  Self-confidence while working with your staff and strong communication skills is very important in leadership. Also, resolving the confrontations and disputes is necessary. Working these many teachers during the visits helped me become more confident, be problem solver, made me more understanding and realize the real deal in the classroom. A good school leader should always watch closely what has been going on inside the classroom and should always be nearby the staff and teachers he/she works it. These visits gave me the chance to observe the staff very closely.

Writing teacher evaluation reports improved my academic writing skills and organize my thoughts in a logical order about a person, or a case.

Reflection on Learning:  During these visits, as an outsider when you get into a school building, you notice lots of different things and realize what components are vitally important for a school and what components are not. Also, being the classroom observing so many different teachers in so many different grade levels, you can see the significant differences between working classroom management, or learning-teaching methods and non-working ones. This is a huge asset I believe for a potential leader. Also, evaluation of a teacher requires being very meticulous and inspiring for the teacher because I use most of my post meeting session as bringing up the points the teacher needs to improve and give feedback, and motivate him/her to do better.

Experience #2 Mathematics Department Head at Chicago Math and Science Academy

Nature of the Activity : I worked as the Mathematics Department Head at Chicago Math and Science Academy between 2004 and 2009. This was my second department head job as I had worked at another charter school in Columbus in the same title and the position. My job duties were almost the same in both schools the goals-college prep school-high expectations-high parent involvement were common to both schools.

People Involved:  CMSA is a charter school serving students grades 6-12. Technically I was responsible from Middle and High School’s math programs and math teachers together. Each school had their dean of academics and I was in cooperation with each of them in our academic team. I had about seven full time math teachers in my team and we were getting together biweekly to discuss the academic issues. I was also meeting with grade chairs every other week in grade team meetings and updating them about mathematics issues, or share the updates in our department meetings.

Roles and Responsibilities:  CMSA has great vision, and high expectations from the staff as well as students. The school proved itself to be an excellent academic model in a very short time and reached 100% college acceptance rate in less than 5 years after foundation and well recognized in Chicago area.

As the department had, I always put a strong college prep focused, rigorous math curriculum, teaching strategies and implementations first in my agenda. My main job was to provide supervision of math department faculty and staff; observe and evaluate them periodically. In the beginning, as the team we wrote and aligned math curriculum 6-12 and implemented curricular activities and programs throughout the years. I played the major role in planning and writing part, and coordinated the efforts among the math teachers.

I was at the same teaching 25-30 years in a week. This gave me the opportunity to experience the difficulties, problems and made me more understanding whenever I faced a problem coming from a math teacher in my team like they were experiencing inefficient classroom managing, or any academic issues with students.

Potential for Educational Leadership:  Mathematics Department is one of the major components of the CMSA community, as it is I believe in many other schools. To lead such a diverse, dynamic math teachers group coming from different educational background and culture, coordinate their efforts, channel their invaluable work into a main vision and goal, trying to synchronize them for a better and successful school with 100% percent college acceptance; have them work with their students to meet and exceed math academic standards in state tests and have them help organizing summer and winter ACT-SAT camp activities gave me the opportunity to be ready for leading a larger group and when the opportunity presents itself, with this background and completing master educational program, and be a successful school leader.

Reflection on Learning: During my years as department head at CMSA, I organized, coordinated and facilitated lots of professional activities in different forms, either running the whole program by myself lasting full day- sometimes three to four days, or inviting speakers, experts, panelists to either our school or to a university campus. This whole coordination takes a lot of communication, and scheduling. People have different needs, and they work on different time schedules. Coordination of such events made me more understanding and responsible, develop the empathy feeling. I had participated tons of professional development or different activities when not until I organized myself I realized how much effort, team work needed to be put in. Also, holding periodical meetings, following the events on the calendar and the checklist, helping teachers in their classroom, and in their activities, I believe helped me earn the necessary skills I would need to become a successful school leader.