Educational Platform

Julie Bastow—This I believe…my educational platform, March 2011

This I believe…my educational platform

My realizations after completing my educational specialist degree-- I’ve been pushed outside of my comfort zone, empowered in community advocacy, propelled by the catalyst of academia. My professional ideology has grown, and there is no doubt in my mind that I, along with those I serve, will be better for it.

Purpose of Education and Schools:

I believe the purpose of education is to build productive community members who employ the necessary critical thinking skills needed to successfully approach life’s next step. Our nation’s school systems have a vital impact on the success of our society. As an example, consider the staggering statistics concerning dropouts. On average, dropouts earn about $12,000.00 per year. This computes to 50% less than those who have a diploma (Rouse/Muenning). Struggles in school can often mean a life of poverty, incarceration, or a dependence on society’s welfare systems. Schools provide students the necessary tools to build a better life.

Effective Leadership:

I believe a strong educational leader must understand that leadership does not come from position, but rather by the ability to influence. “Leadership does not come automatically with high position; conversely, it is possible to be a leader without a position of formal authority” (Bolman and Deal, 345). Leadership, for me, is not a position, but rather a knowledge-based influence arena in which I share expertise in the area of reading and writing with practitioners. From an ESD perspective, leadership expectations often occur at the district level as much of the work is done laterally across local constituents. As Fullan explains, “We can’t change the system without lateral (cross-school and cross-district) sharing and capacity development” (Fullan, 66). With cross-school and cross-district sharing some of the most powerful conversations and learning can take place as educators are allowed a forum to share and expand their knowledge base.

I believe that being a strong educational leader includes employing a systematic foundation for effectiveness. Grounding oneself in these concepts can help to navigate territory that can be quite complex and overwhelming. The key foundational concepts I prescribe to come from Michael Fullan’s text, leadership &sustainability (67).

1. The ability to lead with a compelling, driving conceptualization High engagement with others coupled with abundant two way communication, ultimately leads to shared leadership and commitment at all levels. An educational leader must have a strong, concrete understanding of the concepts of leadership and sustainability in order to see that they are carried out with fidelity.

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2. Collective Moral PurposeEveryone in a district has a responsibility for changing the larger education context for the better, it’s not just about one elementary school doing well—it is about the system as a whole doing well. An educational leader at the district level will need to reinforce and build the capacity for individuals to invest in this belief.

3. The Right Bus An educational leader will identify a coalition of leaders who understand the system and the importance of each component. An educational leader will ensure that the leaders in the right positions focus on curriculum, teaching, and learning. Empowering the right leaders means managing in a way that allows school system leaders to focus on the important issue of learning.

4. Capacity Building A daily habit of working together and constantly developing leadership for the future is necessary. This means job-embedded learning and reflection, and time to do so for those involved in the system. In addition, this means developing leaders within the system so that there is a constant flow of people who can continuously move forward.

5. Lateral Capacity Building An educational leader will engage teams from a wider group of peers (such as across schools or across districts). Learning from one another allows for a broader pool of ideas and the development of stronger learning communities. Educators who have the opportunity to work with colleagues from differing districts and school settings can benefit through outside influence which may offer a new perspective.

6. Ongoing LearningAn educational leader will constantly assess the systems at hand through feedback from experience and make adjustments as necessary. This may mean surveys, discussions, self-review and adjusting in order to improve glitches in the system, policies, or strategies.

7. Productive ConflictThe ability to distinguish between good and bad conflict is an asset to an educational leader. A strong leader understands that collaboration sometimes drives difficult conversations. When working through change, mistakes will be made. Valuing mistakes, being disciplined about learning, and being willing to work through differences makes for productive conflict.

8. A Demanding Culture

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An educational leader will develop a high-pressure and high-support work environment so as to nurture a balance of high expectations alongside high support in on-going learning. Ineffective teaching has a negative effect on everyone in a school (students and staff alike), therefore it is not tolerated. Likewise, a teacher who struggles is provided with a non-threatening opportunity to improve instructional practices.

9. External PartnersAn educational leader will work to build a strategic involvement of business groups, foundations, community-based organizations, universities, networks, federations, or any other outside group which can help to build a district’s professional capacity.

10. Growing Financial InvestmentsEducational leadership involves tracking accountability so that monies are allocated for capacity building in the area of teaching and learning. This also means using data as evidence to showcase that the steps being taken to reallocate financial resources toward teaching and learning is working (and is worth reinvesting in).

Leadership and student learning:

I believe in today’s knowledge age it is imperative that school systems foster “Learning Power” within their students. Doing this means offering opportunities for students to experience instruction and learning following a specified model in order to set a standard, such as Claxton’s four R’s (Fullan, 42).

1. Resilient—ready, absorbed, and persistent in learning2. Resourceful—learning in different ways3. Reflective—becoming strategic with others4. Reciprocal—able to learn alone and with others

There are various ways to teach—some prefer social-constructivism, some prefer inquiry-based learning. This is the beauty of the art of teaching—you make it your own. As a leader, it is important to respect autonomy in teacher approach. It is also important to relentlessly reinforce and model core standards (such as those above) with staff, students, and parents. Using a model provides a clear definition to aspire toward.

A leader’s role in promoting student learning also includes facilitating the use of data which evidences student engagement and the successful learning process. By facilitating measurement methods and data collection, successful student learning can become evident. Four questions a leader can ask in this process include: What do we expect students to learn? How will we know if they learned it? How will we respond when some students don’t learn? And how will we respond when some students have already learned?

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Leadership and professional development:

A leader’s role in supporting teachers is to provide time in the structure of the organization for continuous learning and reflection. By providing time for professional development, professional collaboration, and reflection, a leader can support a systematic approach to examining instructional practices and student achievement. In his text, Transforming Professional Development into Student Results, Douglas Reeves states “…school leaders who attempt to create an environment for improvement without accounting for the primacy of teacher quality, providing effective feedback and monitoring, or creating sufficient time for implementation will have almost no chance of success, no matter how earnestly a new program is implemented” (45).

In addition, a leader should shield staff from too many initiatives or initiative fatigue. By helping teachers focus on one or two goals explicitly, a teacher is able to improve practice versus being pulled in too many directions. Reeves explains, “Just as fragmented efforts are ineffective at the individual level, an organization’s failure to focus inhibits learning for both adults and students” (53).

Leadership and vision:

I believe a leader should constantly communicate and support a vision for an organization. A leader should help staff create a persuasive and hopeful image of the future—especially in challenging times. A leader must articulate a vision through a personal approach to supporting that vision—it may be through story, passion, conviction, or courage. In the text, Reframing Organizations, Bolman and Deal explain:

Recent decades have produced a steady stream of effective leadership. Many have been qualitative studies of leaders, primarily corporate executives. Methodology has varied from casual impressions to systematic interviews and observation. No characteristic is universal in these studies, but vision and focus show up most often. Effective leaders help articulate a vision for performance, and create focus and direction (345).

As an educational leader, it is vital that the vision of the organization be clear, concise, and easy to remember. By keeping it simple, an educational leader can use it and expect others to do the same. The vision should be apparent in the school improvement plan, in communication to teachers to parents. By keeping the vision alive and real, the staff is vested and accountable.

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Leadership and Change:

As an educational leader, it is imperative to identify and understand the stages for change. In the ups and downs of everyday work life, it can help a leader to better understand and remain a positive resource for staff. The eight stages of change which I identify with are derived from John Kotter’s influential work in leadership and change.

1. Create a sense of urgency2. Pull together a guiding team with needed skills, credibility, connections and authority to

move things along3. Create an uplifting vision and strategy4. Communicate the vision and strategy through a combination of words, deeds, and

symbols5. Remove obstacles, empower people to move ahead6. Produce visible symbols of progress through short-term victories7. Stick with the process and refuse to quit when things get tough8. Nurture and shape a new culture to support the emerging innovative ways

(Bolman and Deal, 394)

The change process includes the systematic factors within a model coupled with the human feeling factors of motivation and action. Daniel Cohen explains, “Too many change initiatives fail because they rely too much on data gathering, analysis, report writing, and presentations instead of a more creative approach aimed at grabbing the feelings that motivate useful action. In other words change agents fail when they rely mostly on reason and structure while neglecting human, political, and symbolic elements” (Bolman and Deal, 394). An educational leader must remember to balance systematic factors and feelings in order to continue to move forward through the change process.

Leadership Attitude:

As an educational leader, I believe the following approach describes a necessary attitude for keeping, maintaining, and developing leadership skills within an organization: Strive to be an energy creator:Always enthusiastic and positiveUse critical thinking, creativity, and imaginationStimulate and spark othersPractice leadership at all levelsAble and willing to scrutinize practice and willing to make practice accessible to othersWish to improve upon my best(Fullan, 38)

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By maintaining a balance and managing energy wisely, a strong educational leader can avoid burnout by overuse or, worse yet, atrophy through underuse. As a leader, I strive to work toward being an energy creator, and to aid the staff(s) I influence to invest in the same beliefs.

As I begin my leadership journey with the foundational skills obtained through my Educational Specialist Degree, I feel confident. I look forward to independent studies, more practical application, and ongoing professional reflection. Synthesis will continue to lift me to a new level of learning.

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Works Cited

Bolman, Lee G. & Deal, Terrence E. (2008). Reframing Organizations: Artistry, Choice, and Leadership. San Fransisco, CA: Jossey-Bass Publishers.

Fullan, Michael (2005). Leadership &Sustainability: System Thinkers In Action. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.

Reeves, Douglas (2010). Transforming Professional Development Into Student Results. Alexandria, VA: ASCD Publications.

Rouse/Muenning (2005). www.centerforpubliceducation.org

Vollmer, Jamie (2010). Schools Cannot Do It Alone. Fairfield, IA: Enlightenment Press.

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http://www.centerforpubliceducation.org/