Visions of Leadership

"Educators yearn to be purposeful, professional human beings, and leaderhsip is an essential aspect of a professional life."

I think I agree with this statement. I have had to mull it over quite a bit due to my word association with the word leader. In my mind I automatically think leader = principal. Yet every teacher is a leader. For some of our students, their teachers are the adults that they spend the most time with. How we react to infractions and accomplishments, how we interact with our co-workers, what we say about school rules and school leadership, all these things are presented to our students every day that they are at school. But I don't think of myself as a leader. An example, a role model, yes. A leader seems like someone higher up, a figurehead. I'm not one who just fulfills my role as a teacher as a clerk fills their role in an office. I am constantly working to learn and better myself and what I bring to my classroom. I share what I learn with my colleagues freely and I love to hear the advice and experience of my co-workers. Can we be leaders corporately?

"Educators are purposeful, and leadership realizes purpose."

Successful teachers are intentional in their classrooms, with the intention of reaching all students, not only relaying required information. Successful leaders are intentional in their leadership decisions. My principal does not come to school and randomly choose programs for our school. Her purpose is to make our school the most successful school we can be. Right now successful translates into high scoring. So we have lots of programs in place to remediate and propel our students in to the "distinguished" stratosphere. My students are one to two grade levels below and/or special ed. My purpose is to facilitate learning for my students.

Visions of Leadership

"How we define leadership frames how people will participate in it."

Just as an individual brings different attitudes and ideas to parenting, a leader carries styles of  leadership that they have experienced into the workplace with them.  A parent whose childhood was less than perfect often adopts a parenting style in direct opposition to the style of his or her parents. One of my parents grew up in a unstable environment where yelling was the status quot. They brought that into our home growing up, not realized that there was any other way to express oneself. I hate yelling. In fact I am quite silent when I'm upset. In my classroom  I rarely yell as a means of showing anger towards my students. My classroom management style has a direct correlation to my upbringing. A leader in any setting has experienced leadership styles he or she like and disliked, and they will define their leadership mannerisms according to their experiences.
In my experiences, I have known excellent and uninspiring leaders. The leader who has taken the time to listen to his/her employees, in my experience, is more effective in building a strong staff, than a leader who makes decisions based on his/her position as the leader. A principal who has worked under the guidance of a strong principal, who worked to create a school environment with a strong morale, will bring that tutelage to his/her position. A principal  who formerly worked under a principal who ruled purely by force and his or her opinion of what was right has the choice to carry this learned behavior to his/her school or learn forge their own path. In either situation the authoritative figure must choose his or her behavior based on their past experiences.

The Vision of Leadership

"Within the adult learning environment opportunities for skillful participation top the list of priorities."

Within the walls of my own school building I know that most of our teachers feel that their input means little or nothing to the administration. Our job is to teach, to jump through the hoops, and compile the data that administration deems important. We administer a pre and post district math assessment four times a year at each grade level. The assessment does not match the pacing guides, often comes with typos and is useless for providing teachable feedback. The scores I send the Board of Education are unreliable at best. My students have not been taught the material, of course they will not perform well. The numbers are sent to the Board anyway. What course of action is taken after we use up an entire teaching day to administer the assessment? None. Administration has been notified at the school and board level. The skilled teachers hired to teach math are speaking directly to the problem. Has anything changed? No.

Opportunities for skillful participation should be available at all levels of education. Rather than placing all of the administrative decisions on testing data, allow the teachers to give feedback and pinpoint changes that need to be made within the classroom. Data is absolutely essential for reflection and decision-making, but there are many times that numbers have different meanings. Teachers can often tell you the "why" behind the data.

If a school, district, group of people with common goals and interests wants to move forward, they must listen to the voices of the men and women in the classroom. Let the participation of the teachers help to guide the decision making process. Not only will this lessen the animosity between faculty and administration, it will facilitate success on the classroom, school, and district level.

The Vision of Leadership

"Leaders should have formal authority and overarching roles." 

When I got hired to teach, my principal told me that she was not at our school to be any one's friend. She was there to do what was best for students. While I do not believe that a leader responsible for a large body of people should be every one's friend, in fact I believe this would be detrimental to their role as leader, I believe that a leader should be empathetic to the needs the people under him or her. A leader should not use their role as a leader to alienate themselves from the people working with them.

"Leaders have superior expertise and information."

A leader should bring superior expertise and information to their role. As a teacher I need to know more than my students in order to successfully teach them what they need to know. On the flip side, a leader needs to be willing to learn from those they are working with. My students teach me something new every day. My principal has a ton more experience in the area of discipline than I do, but my principal has never taught reading or writing or even the same grade level that I do. I can bring experience to the table that could help guide her decisions.

“Leaders manage a rational system of management that takes into account structures, routine, outcomes, personnel and action.”

I agree with this statement. A good leader does take into account all the factors for creating a successful environment.  A school or business is not made successful by only one person. A good leader leads his or her team successfully by being aware of the details that create the individual’s work day (it doesn’t hurt to be aware of home situations also).

Tenets of Classical Leadership

"Leaders should have formal authority and overarching roles." 

When I got hired to teach, my principal told me that she was not at our school to be any one's friend. She was there to do what was best for students. While I do not believe that a leader responsible for a large body of people should be every one's friend, in fact I believe this would be detrimental to their role as leader, I believe that a leader should be empathetic to the needs the people under him or her. A leader should not use their role as a leader to alienate themselves from the people working with them.

"Leaders have superior expertise and information."

A leader should bring superior expertise and information to their role. As a teacher I need to know more than my students in order to successfully teach them what they need to know. On the flip side, a leader needs to be willing to learn from those they are working with. My students teach me something new every day. My principal has a ton more experience in the area of discipline than I do, but my principal has never taught reading, writing or even the same grade level that I do. I can bring experience to the table that could help guide her decision-making.

“Leaders manage a rational system of management that takes into account structures, routine, outcomes, personnel and action.”

I agree with this statement. A good leader does take into account all the factors for creating a successful environment.  A school or business is not made successful by only one person. A good leader leads his or her team successfully by being aware of the details that create the individual’s work day (it doesn’t hurt to be aware of home situations also).

Taiwan Trip

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A Peek at My Summer Vacation

Here is a quick peek at my summer vacation in Taiwan! What did you do this summer?