This Effective Leadership course
engaged me deeply as I took the first steps to answering the question, “Will I
be able to become an effective leader in a large, urban school system?” Before beginning this course, I believed I
knew the definition of an effective leader. Good leadership was a simple matter of
facilitating a team of similarly skilled and passionate experts to bring about
change and improvement in a school system such as Prince George’s County Public
Schools. A simple task, I thought. Well, I discovered that it is not so simple,
and that I have a lot of learning and growing to do.
I knew that good leaders needed
to be authentic, ready for change, and willing to take risks. The leadership skills of my favorite past
principals and supervisors matched that description, and they made it look
easy. Honestly, I had no idea how
difficult it really is. Leadership style
is one thing; understanding data and interpreting that data to influence change
is another. Data-driven decision-making
skills are essential to success as an effective leader in school systems today.
In one of our Week I readings,
Michael Fullan describes four guidelines for educational leaders: respect those
you want to silence, move toward the danger in forming new alliances, manage
emotionally as well as rationally, and fight for the lost cause (Fullan,
2007). I found these ideas very interesting
and I could see myself embracing those guidelines to grow as an effective
leader.
The guideline that struck a chord
with me the loudest, was to “manage emotionally as well as rationally.” Establishing good personal emotional health
strategies will help when “reculturing” a system. Changing the way an organization operates
almost always generates resistance from the constituents, and this can be very
taxing on a leader. Personally, I have
been growing in this area, as I have tried (not single-handedly) to change the
status quo with technology integration in curriculum. While facing resistance, it is very important
to remain centered and healthy and to not take disagreement too personally. While this is a challenge for me, it is one
area I am happy to focus on personally.
Interpreting data and using that
information to influence the direction of change is going to be a major
challenge for me. Years ago, as an
undergraduate student, I took a statistics class from the mathematics
department. I was considering adding a
business major to my music education major, and thought that what I learned in
statistics class could be applied to whatever career path I chose. I had no idea then how much that class would
change my perspective on interpreting data. Yet, I still do not feel skilled enough in
data collection and interpretation to make sound reform decisions based on the
inferences made from that data.
According to the article, The New
Instructional Leadership: Creating Data-Driven Instructional Systems in School,
the “heart of the new instructional leadership is the ability of leaders to
shift school cultures of internal accountability to meet the demands of
external accountability.” Schools and
districts need to establish the practice of constantly collecting a rich
variety of data: student achievement data, behavioral data, student, staff and
community surveys, financial information, and student services records, and not
just one type (Halverson, Grigg, Prichett & Thomas, 2007). In a video interview, Michael Fullan states
that the public wants to “know how the school is doing” and that it is tempting
to simply focus on one set of standardized test scores. He stresses the importance of using data on
student learning mainly as a strategy to inform instruction (Fullan, 2007). I need to keep these thoughts in mind as I
continue my journey as a life-long-learner with the goal of becoming an
especially effective school leader.
I am in a wonderful situation in my
current position as Creative Arts Technology Specialist for Prince George’s
County Public Schools in Maryland. It is
a central office position in the department of Curriculum and Instruction. I work with wonderfully skilled and talented
educational leaders who have inspired me, and then encouraged me to move
forward in Administration and Supervision.
I am able to apply the concepts I am learning in my course work at Johns
Hopkins to the day-to-day activities in my current job. Discussions and debates with my supervisor,
the associate superintendent and other leaders at the executive level have been
occurring naturally as we are all collaborating on resolving the current issues
in our own school reform initiatives. I
even have the opportunity to practice my newly acquired skills as I observe
teachers and classrooms throughout the district, shadowing school-based
principals as they observe the teachers I support in the Technology Integration
program at our 33 middle schools. This
experience is contributing greatly to the development of leadership skills that
will most certainly be needed in the future, in whatever capacity that may be
for me.
Discussions concerning educational
technology for teachers, students and administrators are frequent, and I have
been able to assist central office administrators in integrating the use of
technology tools to assist with our work in adopting Charlotte Danielson’s
Framework for Teaching model for formal observations. As we continue the
process of adopting the Common Core, we tap into technology resources to assist
us. This experience will certainly
impact my abilities as an effective leader in the future.
Yes, leadership style is a concept
I found interesting and thought-provoking as I considered my own leadership
skills and the kind of leader I want to become. Data-driven decision making is definitely a
challenge for me, but I know it is a skill I need to develop as I grow into the
kind of leader I want to become. I am
looking forward to gathering and practicing new skills in professional
development, organization, school law, supervision, and curriculum development,
that all build up to certification in Administration and Supervision.
References:
Fullan, Michael (2007). The Jossey-Bass reader on educational leadership.
San Francisco:
Jossey-Bass.
Halverson, R., Grigg, J., Prichett, R., &
Thomas, C. (2007). The new instructional leadership: creating data-driven
instructional systems in school. Journal of school leadership, 17(March), 159-194.
