Partner Voices: Woodville Independent School District

A district leader from Woodville Independent School District, a rural district in Texas, shares what it’s been like engaging with Instruction Partners to build instructional leadership capacity and strengthen teacher support systems. 

Watch and read Woodville ISD’s story below.

Leaders in Woodville Independent School District knew that they needed to build a stronger campus learning culture. With more than 60% of students below grade level in reading and math, high teacher and leader turnover, and limited resources, they also knew that they needed help from an outside partner. Ashley Weatherford, Director of Federal Programs & Curriculum, recalls, “we struggle in our area with having the right tools and the right resources.”

Instruction Partners’ experience partnering with small, rural districts allowed our team to provide support and resources tailored to Woodville ISD’s unique needs. Weatherford shares, “We respected [the Instruction Partners team’s] experiences working with school districts just like ours. I feel like that helped a lot.”

Instruction Partners worked with Woodville principals to build their instructional leadership capacity and facilitate connections between the elementary and intermediate school leaders. Weatherford reports, “They’ve built a trust with those principals, so they have not only worked together with them and built that cohort, but I see even outside the cohort meetings that they work together. It’s more of a vertical alignment.”

In collaboration with Instruction Partners, Woodville principals have strengthened teacher support systems in their schools. Weatherford shares, “With our principals growing as strong instructional leaders, we were able to focus on those planned [PLC] meetings . . . they started to plan what those really need to look like and how to really discuss data and take that and use that in your classrooms.”

“I see a stronger district,” says Weatherford. “I see academically, our progress monitoring, our success, we can see improvement in our scores already, and I really feel like it has a lot to do with our principals becoming stronger instructional leaders, which trickles down to our teachers.” 

Woodville ISD leaders are approaching the next school year with a strong vision for excellent instruction and high expectations for leader and teacher support systems. Looking to the next year, Weatherford shares, “because Instruction Partners has helped set some of those visions, and some of those expectations and what it really looks like, I really feel like next year is going to be such a smoother year. I just feel like it’s going to shift change and lead to improvement.”