Leadership and Planning (565) - Week 6

I don’t know if I had a concrete definition of leadership but my view of leadership was reinforced. I found the four frames of leadership very enlightening as I tried to define my own leadership style.  It also helped me understand the leaders in our district and explained how they make their decisions and work with others.  Not all leaders are the same but there are several factors that make a good leader.  I believe that a good leader communicates well and respects the people they work with.  They also need to be confident and not afraid to make difficult choices and changes if necessary.  These same traits apply to teacher leadership as well.   In addition teacher leaders need to demonstrate expertise in their curricular area and have credibility with their colleagues.

I think this class as well as the last few months at work has reinforced my belief that I can be a leader.  I am more aware of my strengths and I know the areas that I need to work on.  I always felt that I would not be good at supervising staff but I think that I have earned the respect of the staff I work with and with more confidence and experience I could organize and supervise the people in my department.  I have never been real comfortable with conflict but I have been put into many situations recently that required me to stand up to difficult people and I’ve survived!

 

Our schools are full of great educators and teacher leaders.  If we empower them to lead and make positive changes we can improve education within.  In my role as technology specialist I will continue to encourage teachers through professional development.  A favorite part of my job is sharing resources and strategies with teachers and I love to watch teachers transform their instruction.  These changes can improve education and in turn make a difference for students.

Leadership and Planning (565) - Week 5

This week as I read chapter 6, Improving Student and Teacher Achievement I thought about ways that I can begin observing teachers in their classrooms.  All teachers have been given the Information and Technology Literacy Benchmarks and have had professional development on a regular basis but I think it would be beneficial to observe some lessons.  This would be extremely difficult to schedule because this would include all teachers in grades K-8, about 80 teachers but I could see myself visiting the schools and just stopping in.  I would let them know ahead of time what my intentions are and I would work with the principals to make sure the teachers know that I am not coming in to evaluate them.  I typically meet with all grade levels on a yearly basis so I could take time during these days to provide staff development on specific needs that I observed during my time in the classroom.

The final section in chapter 6 focused on assessment and data analysis.  I agree that we should not only assess our students but teachers need to take time to look at the data after it is collected.  This is a great opportunity to set goals and develop strategies to improve instruction.  One of my big goals for this year is to do this with the 8^th grade teachers after their students take the Simple Assessment (pre-assessment).  I would like them to look at the data so that they can set some information and technology literacy goals for their 8^th grade teams.

Leadership and Planning (565) - Week 4

Leadership Opportunities

During the last three weeks I have had several opportunities to put my leadership skills into action.  With the school year beginning I was put into a leadership role that in some ways has naturally evolved and in other ways I was thrown right in.

Soon after our discussions about being part of the interview process I took advantage of a situation and asked to be on an interview team for our high school’s head principal.  I had not been on an interview team for several years and I knew that I would be working closing with the person in this position so I felt it was important for me to have some input.  It gave me the opportunity to see a variety of leaders and different leadership styles.  Many of the characteristics that we’ve discussed in this class came through in several applicants.  What I found was that it was very easy to pick out the people who did not have the qualifications and more difficult when you had to choose between two good candidates with different leadership styles.  It was a great experience and I felt like I really got to know the applicant who was eventually hired.  I have had to work pretty closely with our new principal on a couple of major projects and I believe we made the right choice.

In addition to the interview other leadership opportunities were presented to me.  On the first day of school I joined other administrators in our district with a presentation at our opening inservice.  I gave a short presentation on all of the major technology changes that took place over the summer.  With our former technology director we had never done this and I felt that communication was very important.  The feedback that I received after inservice confirmed this belief.  Another opportunity came along that was not as pleasant but just as important.  A principal was making our technology work order process very difficult and submitted over 80 work orders in one day.  Many of these tasks had already been completed so he was actually creating more work for everyone and the management of our work was almost impossible.  I was told to contact him and explain how his actions were hindering the process and to stop what he was doing.  My nature tends to avoid conflict so this was not an easy email to send but I knew that I had the support of my superintendent.  In the end this principal did change his behavior and after talking with him I found that he respected my request and my new “position”.

Throughout the last few years I have been asked to take on more of a leadership role, but my role has not been truly defined.  I was asked to bring a proposal to our superintendent to address this issue so I took the WI Standards for Administrators as well as the WI Instructional Technology Coordinator Standards and documented how I have met these standards in my current job tasks and responsibilities.  It was very eye opening and I was actually surprised to see how many of these standards I’ve already met.  I believe that our Superintendent, who is also our acting Technology Director already knew that I was doing some of these things but not to the extent that I documented.  In addition to helping me complete my portfolio hopefully this process will help us reevaluate my contract for the school district.  I have a meeting with him on Tuesday morning so we’ll see…