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…