I recently came across an old blog post by George Couros called "5 Questions You Should Ask Your Leader". Being a new administrator, I know that I do not have the best answers yet, but it of course made me think about my responses.
Before offering my answers, I offer this thought:
As educators, we are ALL leaders.
Students and parents see all of us as leaders. Over time, every educator develops a "niche" area of leadership, which could be service learning, curriculum writing, developing relationships with hard-to-reach students, content-area leadership, and so on. I encourage you to think about your own answers to these questions as I humbly offer mine.
1. What are some ways you connect with your school community (fostering effective relationships)?
Over the years, I've realized I'm really bad at names, but I'm really good at stories. If I just hear a name, I have a hard time remembering it. But if I get to hear about your life, family, and interests, I remember. I think it's the part of me that loves to ask questions. The upside? It's genuine interest - I really do love the stories. The downside? It takes a long time to do this, especially if you are in a new role. Making yourself present is the key. That's actually easy to do with adults. Trying to do that with students is more difficult - as a school leader, it seems that most of the times you see students, they are always in a hurry to get somewhere else ...
2. What are some areas of teaching and learning that you can lead in the school (Instructional Leadership)? Every educator eventually needs to specialize in a few things. The art and science of education is too complicated to know it all. After my years in the classroom and in teacher leadership, here are the areas of instructional leadership that others have helped me see in myself:
• Instructional Planning & Learning Target Theory
• Curriculum Development (UbD)
• Technology Integration
• Personalizing Learning
• Student Engagement strategies
• Feedback strategies
• Formative Assessment strategies
• Finding ways for teachers to measure their own impact
• Strategies for helping students in crisis
I purposefully avoided saying anything about content-area related leadership, preferring to focus on "Instructional Leadership" that cuts across borders.
3. What are you hoping teaching and learning looks like in your school and how do you communicate that vision (Embodying Visionary Leadership)?
Every school needs to come together to create its own vision of high-quality instruction. Here is my personal vision of teaching and learning:
• A teacher's vocation is to help each student find his/her "song" and sing it proudly.
• Every student deserves at least one year's growth, every year.
• Highly engaging instructional strategies produce student efficacy and motivation that leads to achievement.
How is this communicated? The staff, parents, and students should be co-creators of this instructional vision. Jim Knight says keep it simple - a one page instructional vision that all can agree to and be accountable for.
4. How do you build leadership capacity in your schools?
First, we have to identify the talents we see in each other. As stated earlier, we can't know or do it all in this complicated vocation we call "teaching". Recognize and name the strengths we see in one another and then match those strengths to the needs we have as a school. People don't want to join committees? Maybe you have the wrong types of committees, or maybe you have too many overlapping strengths. Give people permission to run with their strengths and see what develops.
5. What will be your "fingerprints" on this building after you leave (creating sustainable change)?
Two "I"s of education: Innovation and Impact.
• Innovation asks the question: "Can I do this in a better way?"
• Impact asks the question: "How do I know that what I did made a difference?"
Innovation means that we become a school that studies itself, looking for better ways to teach and reach students. Impact means that we become educators who can look back at the end of our day and say, "Here are the ways I made a difference today and here's how I know it." We become a school that studies itself, looking for ways to increase our impact in measurable ways.
Saturday, September 16, 2017
Saturday, September 2, 2017
Who Teaches Us?
• Playing "school" with their dolls as dad observes the teachers [Hard as they try, student engagement always seems to be quite lacking.]
• Asking them real interview questions [Q: How do you build relationships with students? Their answer: Be nice and be funny.]
They have many questions and observations of their own about my new position. The other night, one of them asked (in a very oversimplified way) "If teachers teach the students, and principals teach the teachers, who teaches the principal?"
After a pause, my very real answer was that the teachers teach the principal. Yes, and ...
We must consider how each of us continues our learning journey every day. It is more important than ever to be a "connected educator". That doesn't mean connected to the internet - it means connected to people. People who make us think, who motivate and inspire us, who confirm our instincts, challenge our thinking, and who push us into deeper waters.
The most important connections are the personal connections in your building. But we all need connections to people in other buildings. To books and journals. And more than ever, to online connections such as Twitter.
I always heard people say "I don't have time for Twitter."
Until one day I heard someone say "I don't have time NOT to be on Twitter."
That was the moment of clarity for me. Even ten minutes a day of Twitter provided more connections, inspiration, challenges, and ideas from amazing educators than I could get anywhere else in the same amount of time. The biggest time saver in life is having a world's worth of ideas at your fingertips.
I don't have time NOT to be connected anymore.
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