A Culture of Learning to Support Reform

From my perspective, school culture is the most important helper or hindrance to school reform and change initiatives. It is dictated by perspectives of students, parents, community members, and teachers. A sense of purpose can be created through many aspects of a school – the classroom, PLC (Professional Learning Community) meetings, staff meetings, PTA meetings, at after-school activities, in the parking lot, and more. The Peterson reading reminds us that every member of the school is a learner, and modeling that behavior for all stakeholders is important to establishing a positive school culture. Comprehensive School Reform (CSR) models require buy-in and trust in order to succeed, and a positive school culture can assist with the creation of these necessary factors.

When students, teachers, and administrators share common beliefs and values, and have a sense of purpose and vision about the school’s mission, positive relationships abound. Productivity increases, and the school community is more willing to tackle all types of problems through first-order AND second-order change initiatives. The CSR will have the support of the PLC at the school, and administrators will have an easier time monitoring and evaluating its effectiveness as teachers, students, and parents will be more willing to provide their “two cents.”

I have realized that I am very fortunate to work where I do when it comes to school culture. We have established a very positive culture of shared inquiry and dialogue, and our PLC meetings have produced interdisciplinary products which have extended the scope of our students to include the “bigger picture” of their work in school. We embrace diversity and special needs learners, and do our best to inspire students to build their own experiences and perspectives out of our curriculum and after-school activities. I am in some ways at the epicenter of school reform in the greater context of the American educational dilemma through the lens of a small (about 360 students) liberal arts charter school in the heart of New Mexico. We are merging the intellectual freedom components of a liberal arts education with the 21st century demands of technology integration and continually changing expectations of our students, and, when coupled with a more manageable student:teacher ratio and advisory groups, it’s created a tremendously positive school culture and effective learning environment.

Shaping Myself into an Effective Leader

On pages 147 - 148 of the Jossey-Bass Reader, Robert Evans cites a partial quote that rang true to me as a core belief I have about effective leadership: “They [bring] themselves with them to graduate school…and the [take] themselves back to their schools…knowing some new things, perhaps, but still basically themselves” (Blumberg, 1989). While this thought may scare those that feel hard work and experience will trump innate ability and passion any day, it gave me an all-encompassing positive feeling about what I may be capable of producing upon completion of this program. I feel the passion for educational change in my bones, and have successfully led multiple organizations. What I feel I most need is a backbone of knowledge and true understanding of leadership vocabulary and how to mend them in application of second order change.

Leadership, like many other facets of human nature, is hinged upon appropriate balance; there is a continuum for multiple factors of effective leadership. For instance, the continuum of transactional and transformational leadership is one that will dictate a school’s fate. Will it bend to the will of bureaucratic reform agendas, encourage defiance and creativity through only a school-based agenda, or fall happily somewhere in between? Then there’s the continuum of McGregor’s theories X & Y: should the effective leader micromanage his workforce into submitting to a school vision due to their solely extrinsic motivating factors, or place the vision and goal production in staff members’ hands since they will be intrinsically motivated to produce significant tasks? There are many other continua for leadership improvement, and it seems that an effective leader will find his place on each before selecting his leadership position. Then, once he has met his staff and established a shared vision, he will shift along the continua (ever so slightly) until the scale of change shifts in his favor.

In determining the 3-5 characteristics each school leader must possess, I have to say I have an affinity for Mark Goldberg’s list, and until I complete this course and its assessment, I am not sure I have the leeway to produce a better one. To choose these characteristics is not to falsify my own beliefs, but to acknowledge that this list was compiled through soliciting successful school leaders, and to verify that I find myself thus far in full belief that these ARE the five most important characteristics of a school leader.

1) A Bedrock Belief – Walking your talk is easier when you truly believe in what you’re communicating to others – both verbally and nonverbally. I would be more willing to take risks if I were in a position of trust earned through affirmation of my own personal leadership strengths and weaknesses.

2) Courage to Swim Upstream – In today’s world of high-stakes testing and litigious minds, I value school leaders that hold their school to its own standards and vision, regardless of its popularity in the mind of bureaucrats. We have to be willing to discuss Dewey and Socrates’ views on education and experience while questioning the status quo. We have to determine where we stand on the continuum of child and curriculum, and hold our ground when others try to push us more toward one direction or the other.

3) Social Conscience – As Leithwood highlights in “Transformation School Leadership in a Transactional Policy World, the recession of the 1980s prompted a loss of public confidence in schools as the instruments for social improvement. While I believe parents should be the number one contributor to a child’s social development and improvement of understanding social norms, the school must follow up these efforts as a close second. Schools should embrace their standing as a litmus paper for the surrounding community, and reach out to the greater world in an exchange of ideas and principles, for our common philosophical question on this earth is, “What does it mean to be human?” (IB Philosophy HL Course Focus)

4) Seriousness of Purpose – School leaders serve as the voice of their school. They should continually speak with a sense of purpose, a zeal for the goings-on of the students and faculty around them. We should maintain integrity and ethical behavior, as the development of the child is a serious, significant task. We should maintain academic rigor. If a student has mastered everything in his/her courses, why is he/she in school? This is a difficult, but important, question for every school leader.

5) Situational Mastery – Thus far my nemesis on the list… An effective school leader should be able to improvise, diffuse parental “bombs” unruffle “goose feathers”, provide impromptu resources for instructors, know the cliques of faculty members inside and out, and predict, predict, predict problems and possible solutions. I once heard a saying I rather like to fit this principle – “When you come to a wall, you have two options: Go around it as if it isn’t there, or shape the wall to fit your needs and climb over it, growing as an individual and leaving the wall behind you.” I think it’s far better to shape the wall, but I often find myself finding a creative way to go around it. I satisfy peoples’ needs by listening, but I don’t tend to actively engage in the problem to truly leave it behind.

I truly look forward to the next five weeks of this course, as I hope to make myself more of an authentic leader, and practice behaviors and concepts of motivation in my internship. Thankfully, I have a wonderful working relationship with my peers, so they should tolerate my experimentation rather well!

Transformational Leadership

In mathematics, a transformation is an operative factor or set of factors that completely change(s) the function, matrix, or shape in focus. Every variable, every coefficient takes on a new role as part of some overarching systemic alteration of the situation. While the definition of transformation has a different look in every context, it remains true and equitable to my mathematical understanding of the term. Keith Leithwood calls Transformational Leadership broad and systemic, and he provides some possible factors of transformation. If you see it from Bernard Bass’ perspective, the factors of transformational leadership are charisma, inspirational leadership, individualized consideration, and intellectual stimulation. Leithwood has worked with colleagues to identify Setting Directions, Developing People, and Redesigning the Organization as three broad categorical factors of transformational leadership. It seems to me that transformational leadership is personal, emotional, and collaborative; intangible in definition to those outside the organization and vital to successful change for the members of the organization.

Regardless of when and how we spend our time on earth, we live in the here and now, the modern world. As effective human beings, we mold ourselves to fit the modern era through understanding of the views of others and the current best practices of our profession and community. It is no different for a school leader. We currently live in a world of high-stakes testing and continually outmoded technological infrastructure. An transformational school leader must ensure that he/she is utilizing educational best practices for successful implementation of systemic change. A transformational school leader must understand and appreciate the needs and strengths of the staff members of the organization, as it is their potential and abilities that will provide the catalyst for transformation, one of the most important mathematical factors (Covey, 1992). In stark contrast to a transactional leader, a transformational leader utilizes situational awareness skills to transcend daily affairs and focus on the big picture – that of the school’s shared vision and professional development while the transactional leader focuses on the mundane day-to-day transgressions. The transformational leader must be self-aware and confident in his motives for change, while the transactional leader’s common motive is to do his/her job to earn a paycheck. While the transactional leader may focus on the high-stakes testing above all else, the transformational leader must merely work his/her way through it en route to accomplishment of the community’s vision for the students at the school.

As I mentioned before, technology is continually updating and outmoding itself. A transformational school leader not only has to be innovative in his/her instructional integration of technology, but also aware of and able to predict the expenses of maintaining the infrastructure for continual quality and effectiveness. In our modern world, every school leader should coax some mention of technology integration into the school’s shared vision, and how it will be beneficial to the students of the organization. How will technology incite their emotions and engage their human potential? Will it be handled ethically and promote self-efficacy, or will it be seen as another standard of curricular development that must be somehow wired into the student’s brain? A transformational leader doesn’t have to have the answer to these questions on his own, but must convey to his/her staff members that these are important questions that should be reflected upon as technology becomes part of the life-blood of the institution.

Transformational leaders are innovative, charismatic, change-inspiring individuals with a sense of purpose and the ability to incite others’ human potential and intrinsic motivation for implementing reform agendas. The primary stakeholders of any school should unquestionably see their leader as transformative and inspirational, and while government bureaucrats and leaders of other schools may not understand his/her methods and potentially despise the risks taken, they have some level of respect and admiration for the emotion and excitement of the school’s community. Leithwood suggests that transformational leadership is vital to success in the world of high-stakes testing and declining community confidence in the school’s non-academic spheres’ ability to influence positive change. Follow the best evidence available in the modern world as you transform your school into a high-achieving, socially aware community of learners.

The 21 responsibilities of the school leader

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The 21 responsibilities of the school leader

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Comparing School Leader Responsibility Survey Results

The 21 responsibilities of the school leader

The SlideShare Presentation above gives compiled data results of my completion of the leadership self-assessment (blue bars) and Balanced Leadership survey (red bars). I have included the overall composite mean (green bars) for comparative analysis of each responsibility to my overall general skill. The mean rating I scored was a 3.86 out of 5. Having never served as a principal before, I am hesitant to make much sense of the lasting results of the completed rubrics; however, there are certainly some responsibilities I will be more inclined to focus on during present and future leadership endeavors.

For instance, after reading Marzano, Waters, and McNulty’s description of “order,” I felt it was an area of weakness. A definition of order given in the context of schools is, “clear boundaries and rules for both students and faculty (Nunnelly, Whaley, Mull, and Hott, 2003). I have a difficult time establishing routine for my own life, and extending that into a large system with potentially thousands of stakeholders is a matter of preoccupation. I rated myself a 1 in this responsibility, and the follow-up survey rated me a 1.67 – providing further evidence for affirmation that I have to work on this area and recruit people for my leadership team that will compensate this weakness with their strength in the area.

After reading about Situational Awareness and finding out that research has determined it to carry the highest correlation for student achievement (Marzano, Waters, McNulty, 2005), I am a little anxious about both of my survey scores rating it lower than the composite mean score. I feel that I can accurately predict what may go wrong from day to day, but do not have an acute awareness of the interactions of those around me, which can make it more difficult to predict how staff members will react to new initiatives and the issues that arise each day. Two areas that I also would like to place emphasis on as I grow as a leader are focus and monitoring/evaluating. I feel more confident that I can address these responsibilities with learned behaviors and guidance from others than I do with the other two responsibilities needing compensation of skill.

In highlighting strengths within the responsibilities, I found that the majority of responsibilities on which I scored well are those that address vision and/or instruction. Change Agent, Input, Optimizer, and Resources are the four that I feel are most helpful in pushing forward with vision and change, issues that are vital to institutional success. I have a passion for teaching and learning which transcends subject area, learning disabilities, and mountains of paperwork. My personal vision revolves around instructional and social reform, most likely leading me to encroach upon others and engage often in second order change. Having strengths in these areas will assist me as I work through the challenging stages of school reform initiatives. I value the Optimizer label above the rest because I feel it is more representative of my true self – inside or outside of education. I have a knack for making the best out of difficult situations, and am able to maintain a calm environment through tough waters.

I found this to be an exceptionally fruitful exercise, and I look forward to further analyzing my strengths and weaknesses as a training school leader.

Online Learning Orientation: A Reflection

In participating in the 2010-11 JHU Administration & Supervision ISTE program as a member of its cohort, I hope to become a more polished, informed leader with a general understanding of online and hybrid learning opportunities. Guided by experiences - those of others and of my own - and open discussion, I would like to learn how to apply myself in a more efficient way as a leader in my school, as well as the field of education. Shortly after completing this program and my Master's degree, I hope to be a certified school administrator with teaching subject endorsements in math, science, ESL (English as a Second Language), and technology (this program will help with acquiring the technology endorsement). I would like to use my skills and certification to become part of a leadership team at an urban school with a focus on STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, & Math) education.

In order to be successful in this program, the first phrase that comes to mind is "time management." If I don't start each academic week by estabishing a schedule and communicating with my team, I can't imagine I'll be successful as I need and want to be. I will log in every day - even if only to read the announcements and check the discussion board. When I create the weekly schedule, I will be sure to plan extra time for writing assignments, as I feel it is a focus area for me. I would like to take my time drafting essays and responses to various media.

Writing is certainly one area where I feel I may need extra support. While I have never received less than a B on any writing assignment in my academic career, I have also never been happy with the structure of my writing, nor have I fully understood all the guidelines for various types of writing and citing resources (such as APA). It seems to me that many of my instructors liked my ideas and had no qualms (in general) with my spelling or mechanics, but that's not good enough for me. I want to be sure that any ideas I have are communicated clearly and professionally, so that the vast majority of people will be able to respect and understand what I am saying. This will be of great assistance when my opinion may differ from others, and when a school full of teachers, students, and community members will require access to my writing.

I very much look forward to meeting everyone in Denver! I actually spent my first year of teaching in inner-city Denver, and lived very close to the Colorado Convention Center. It should be a pleasant and exhilirating experience!