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…

Leadership and Planning (565) - Week 3

This week I really enjoyed the simulation. Our team worked well together to discuss the best strategies to move the district employees forward. We weren’t very successful at the beginning because we needed to make sure more people were aware of issues and topics in the district but we finally discovered that giving everyone a survey helped accomplish this task. After I thought about it I would have to agree that when people take surveys, regardless of the feedback that they give, they learn by simply reading the questions and options. I saw this happen when I gave teachers an assessment on online safety for students. Many teachers said that by taking the survey they were made more aware of the issues that needed to be addressed.

All of my team members were also frustrated with the three employees who would not be persuaded to complete the survey. We have all worked with people like this and the resistance to change or even receive new information is frustrating to those who truly believe that it would be in the best interest of everyone to have an open mind. It sounds like persistence will pay off and I’m anxious to see which strategy will work to help move these people forward.

The review of “Who Moved My Cheese” was a very timely and appropriate activity for me this week. As I said in my forum post I was planning to reread this book before the beginning of school because our district is undergoing some major changes. Although most changes are positive changes and are best for the district I anticipate a lot of negativity as the year begins. Our own district changes along with the changes at the state level will really require people to move out of their comfort zone and look ahead. We will need to remind people that “The quicker you let go of old cheese, the sooner you find new cheese!”

I also felt that the speaker in the Changes in Thinking – Systems Thinking video had some great points on system change. Our system is definitely changing and I hope that all of the parts of the system; administration, teachers, communities, state leaders, etc. can interact so that they are not working in isolation. We need to respect everyone’s role and purpose in education and keep in mind that everyone should have the same goal in mind to educate and prepare our students to be successful in this ever-changing world.

Leadership and Planning (565) - Week 2

Evaluating data has been a small part of my job and each year I collect training data, survey staff and evaluate subscription data to make decisions about professional development and instructional resources.  This week has reminded me of how important collecting and evaluating data can be for setting goals and making changes in a district.  In the past I have found that staff can get very frustrated when we ask them to fill out surveys or ask students to take another assessment, so I think I need to share more results with them and involve them in more of the planning that takes place after.   This may help them understand and be more tolerant of the requests that we make each year.

I didn’t find chapter two, “Strategic Leadership: Assembling Your Team” as valuable at chapter one or three.  Although I agree that having teachers involved in the interview process is a great way to engage teacher leaders I don’t see teachers having as much involvement as the author described in chapter two.  I liked Gabriel’s suggestions and I may be able to use some of the tips for conducting the interview as we continue to interview new staff but I don’t see our teachers taking the role of placing or scheduling of new teachers. 

I did enjoy reading Chapter Three,” Interpersonal Leadership: Communicating Your Leadership”.  I feel that communication is one of the most important skills that a leader should have and I’ve seen many leaders fail because of poor communication skills.  In a world where email is a major communication tool we have to be very careful how we word things.  People can’t see facial expressions and body language when reading emails and many times people interpret the words much differently than the author intended.  Another danger is reacting too quickly to a confrontational email.  I have learned to read an email several times and then wait before I respond to an email that requires some thought.

I also liked Gabriel’s oral communication suggestions.  Answering a question with a question can sometimes be frustrating but I understand his point that it can help a person discover the answer on their own.  I also like the reminder to “put it in the positive”.   His example of asking, “How did it go when you turned in that form?”  instead of “Did you take care of that form that I asked you to?” is a great way to put the responsibility on  them.  I am definitely going to try that approach in the future.

Leadership and Planning (565) - Week 1

My current position as Technology Specialist requires many opportunities for leadership.  I provide technology staff development for all staff K-12 and in most cases I am asking people to think about change.  In my leadership role I try and provide them with resources and current research to support the changes and I model some of the educational strategies to encourage a new way of thinking. 

Another major part of my job is writing and supporting the Information and Technology Literacy Benchmarks.  This has put me in a leadership role as well because I have had to organize and facilitate curriculum writing groups and then implement the benchmarks and yearly changes.    Until recently I’ve been working under a teacher contract with my colleagues and I’ve had to earn their respect as a teacher leader. 

Most recently I had to write our Information and Technology Plan.  During this 2-3 year process I had to collect data and work with other teachers and administrators to analyze our previous goals and write new goal and objectives.  At times I had to ask all staff to complete surveys and complete tasks and sometimes that was difficult to do when some of these people were my “superiors”.

The leadership assessments this week really made me think about the kind of leader I currently am and the areas that I will need to improve on.  My “adaptive assertive” style of leadership has helped me stay focused on some major initiatives and I think my colleagues do respect me and complete tasks that I’ve requested them to do because they trust me and believe that I am looking out for the district and our students. 

I also found Patrick Awuah's very encouraging and I loved his comment that "We can not achieve perfection but if we reach for it then we can achieve excellence.”  I need to encourage our teachers to think in this way and they can pass this on to their students.  I also want to take his advice to ask the right questions and confront the problems that we face in education.