“Leadership is inspiring others to pursue your vision within the parameters you set, to the extent that it becomes a shared effort, a shared vision, and a shared success.” (Zeitchik, 2013)
I’ve never considered myself a leader. I’ve considered myself in the feedback that I have gotten over my twenty year career – “good teacher”, “student focused”, “knowledgeable” “teacher leader” – with the latter always baffling me. What makes me a teacher leader when I don’t consider myself in the role of a leader? In considering the latter, Donaldson 2006 proposes, “Leadership mobilizes people to adapt their practices and beliefs so that every child’s learning and growth are optimized.” (p.7). Therefore, a synthesis of all that sustained career feedback is true of me – but perhaps I’ve never really been in the right context to really take that leadership ability out of the box and utilize it to the fullest extent – until perhaps now!
On reflection across this course, I have four personal reflections that emerged from discussions and readings during this course.
1. School Culture
I am now back at school in a whole new job role (from classroom teacher to technology coach) and a brand new administration. I will experience first hand what Fullan (2001) called “reculturing”. And this, for the school that I have taught at for eight years, it will be a paradigm shift!
As a school that started in a humble make-shift building in 1985 as the vision of one Mr. Alex Horsley (whom I knew well and was my mentor until his sad and all too soon passing in 2012), this school was the quirky little private school in Buckhead for the children of diplomats and parents that wanted their children to have an International Education. Our focus was on language acquisition – and indeed the founder was proficient in seven different languages, including Mandarin! This was our vision – even through subsequent changes in director to our current director who has been with us for five years. But the vision has changed – and while some of the faculty that remain from the days of Horsley and others that had that vision steadfast in their sights, we are in danger of becoming just another “international school “ with International Baccalaureate (IB), with no clear or real roadmap or idea as to who we are anymore. Hence, the 2014 climate survey, the changes in leadership and my school initiated movement from classroom teacher to enact a descriptor that I seem to consistently be branded with: teacher leader. I'm still not sure what that will look like yet but hopping that my learning in this course this summer will go some way to helping me scope and deliver this role. (Technology Integration Coach 6 – 12). I find myself in a role and at the center of recapturing and a school wide rediscovery of "who we are from who we were". Back to basics! A reflection and a living collective moment to reestablish who we are as a school get a handle on what our focus is. Are we IB? Are we language acquisition? Are we STEAM/STEM? Are we a private school for students in Buckhead, Atlanta, Georgia?
2. School Diversity
The automatic assumption is that, because I am from Northern Ireland, because I have taught in three different countries and that because I now teach in an international school, I must be adept at accepting diversity. I would argue to the contrary. I would argue, however I have seen, in the most part and perhaps mainly due to the contexts for learning that I find myself in in my career what Lareau (2002) called “concerted cultivation” – because I am Caucasian I only observed what the white kids were doing – and when invited to a black fellowship church in North Carolina or offered chitlins by a by a gracious southern host, I found myself alien in a land that I thought I knew. Perhaps I have always lived in what Wise calls “the bubble of privilege”. But growing up in homogeneous Northern Ireland, I would not have described my childhood as privileged. White, yes. Privileged, no! I grew in a different genre of cultural blindness (that of religion) but have seen that even here in the US, I may also have the reverse pinned on how blind my many can be to my culture, although many would argue that we are the same (same geographical region, yes…same culture, absolutely not!). Therefore in my leadership philosophy, my approach to diversity needs to be wider than the socio economic bubble that I find myself in given my current school situation. To move our school forward in this sense, building higher parent efficacy in our school, particularly with parents who have English only as a second or a third language is key. Ironically, our website is only in English – and considering that our working languages that we foster are also French, Spanish and German, there is an argument to be had in helping our communication by providing more literature and information in our “mother tongues”. While diversity goes way beyond language, my leadership philosophy would be to carefully consider the stakeholders at our school. As a school we started back on the first day with this focus - a school wide inclusivity study. Regardless of our faculty, parents, student and community socio-economic status, we are looking to insure careful management of resources and support to fully include those stakeholders.
4. Professional Learning
Professional Development (PD) in my school has developed a well documented and advocated professional development. However, it was very aligned to programmes that would be supported that seem to lend themselves to what the administration believe to be good for future leaders without much evaluation as to how these have actually impacted leadership in the school over the years that they have aligned to these programmes. I've been on many PD offerings - and not lead anything to share that learning post conference. There is still and alignment of our school’s need to have the “sage on the stage” as part of our faculty PD. Tim Wise will return in the fall to assist us with our diversity and climate evaluation self study. As a new “administrative” coach in the leadership role for instructional technology in this school, I confess that I am unsure of how navigate this. I see a “sense of urgency” in that the one to one laptop programme has been in school for over four years; but the faculty are still in a disparity in authentic use of this powerful tool for teaching and learning.
I do know one thing. I do support that we, as a school, went down the road of getting our faculty to think about their SMART Goals annually. This is one point to which I have been glued – that we need, as an organization to revisit who we are, refocus our vision and establish a narrow but clear set of rigorous (but achievable in the context) goals for our roadmap. Thus, in order to really establish my role in the realms of professional development (as really, this is going to be my bread and butter come the Fall!), I will establish my position power by reaching out to the key players to be involved in the technology integration team. Look for expertise across the subject areas – and those personalities that are open-minded enough to fix their sights on an aligned set of goals.
4. Collaboration with Community
Working collaboratively. It’s interesting, but as I completed this particular discussion (on the day that I wrote this paper), a particular professional development session sprung to mind while writing this blog reflection: http://www.devstu.org/lesson-study
Lesson Study is where educators spend a week deliberately planning, reviewing and refining their teaching in a small, collaborative group. What grabbed me about this PD was the real conversations that were being had by the exemplar teachers. I really felt that it was a beneficial programme to enhance collaborative planning in our school. However, when I emailed our Head of Curriculum and Professional Development about it as it was she that introduced our faculty to the concept, she said that it had met with some resistance and we would not pursue further.
While reflecting on this course, I realized that many time I had experienced the classic definition of a transactional leader – really someone who is going through the motions and if there is no gain in his participation for him/herself, then he/she does not buy into ideas. It would seem that Lortie (1975)’s premise of having “autonomy” as the primary source of professional satisfaction is alive and well in many of our school climates. As I navigate this, my learning from this summer may well serve me well. Kotter (2012), in his New Preface to his book from 1996, relates that “the most fundamental mistakes smart people make when they are trying to make big changes, especially implementing high stakes strategies or initiatives, are mostly still the same today” (p.vii). In utilizing Kotter’s eight stage process at an authentic level (and knowing that the two remaining administrators have read and agreed with Kotter’s work) might be a baseline to start my new leadership role. Over the last twelve months, I’ve personally piloted a paper free classroom in our school and recently presented this to over one hundred educators at the International Standards in Technology Education (ISTE) conference, held in Atlanta in July. Lone wolf – yes – but now have the data to show that this works and hope that when I move into the coaching role with some bleeding edgers next year that they will move forward in a more authentic integration of this powerful technology to enhance our teaching and learning across the school. As Dufour (2009) define “a team is a group of people who work together to achieve a common goal” (Sol Tree, 2009) so it must be that I need to working to creating that guiding coalition that helps to hone that vision and enhance the strategies that are being manifested through our school improvement plan. I’m not saying I will be a transformative leader – but I do need to take a confidence stance for our faculty and students to progress.
Thus my Leadership Vision
Vision
As an aspiring leader in my school, I would revisit our current mission and vision with our faculty and review all stakeholder ideas considering our goals as a school and who we believe ourselves to be. I would articulate this in an iterative school improvement plan.
Facilitating Change
In cultivating that our school improvement is likely to be iterative in nature I would build in Kotter’s Eight Stage Process into the facilitation of the likely change that will come about from our reviews of our mission and vision.
School Culture
As our school will be launching an AIS initiative driven by our core values in delivery of our current mission of “mutual respect and understanding in a diverse community” I would actively participate in the project to engage our stakeholders in dialogue around inclusivity and deepen my knowledge and understanding of the National Association of Independent Schools’ Assessment of Inclusivity and Multiculturalism (AIM), which will look to having leaders for the self assessment study and process. I would see myself aligning especially to the group that talks to and in depth exploration of the area of Teaching and Learning given my new role as Technology Integration Coach.
Instructional Leadership / Technology Integration
This kind of goes without saying – and the reason why I combined both into one heading! Next year, I will be part of a team that will embrace both these positions of leadership in a way that will be transformative for our faculty. I will have to show instructional leadership across technology and access teachers that are very nervous of technology to a level of integration that they may not have experienced in their teaching practice before.
Professional Learning
As I aim to broaden the administrative perception of what is “good professional development”, I will use this course and others like it (including MOOC’s) to broaden their understanding of professional learning.
Collaboration with Community
As an established and respected teacher already in my school context, I will yoke the strengths of existing collegial relationships across subject areas to strengthen the adoption of deeper technology integration across teaching and learning in AIS.
Diversity
Knowing that we are still a school representing over ninety-five different nationalities and that we need to look carefully in a formalized study to what we understanding to be cultural diversity, I will take a leadership role in this study.
Ethics
Using the IB Learner Profile as my guide for modeling good ethical behavior in our students, I will develop this Learner Profile as one that faculty can emulate for the benefit of students ethical education and further understanding of this kind of behavior in the International School Community.
References
Fullan, M. (2002). The Change Leader. Beyond Instructional Leadership. 16-21
Peterson, K. (2002). Positive or Negative. National Staff Development Council. 10-15.
Lareau, A. (2002). Invisible inequality: Social class and childbearing in black families and white families. American Sociological Review, 67(5), 747-776. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com.proxy.kennesaw.edu/docview/218796382?accountid=11824
Cucchiara, M. B., & Horvat, E. M. (2009). Perils and promises: Middle-class parental involvement in urban schools. American Educational Research Journal, 46(4), 974-1004. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/200447132?accountid=11824
Solution Tree: Rick DuFour on Groups vs. Teams. (n.d.). Retrieved July 15, 2014, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0hV65KIItlE&feature=related
Monica Higgins, Lissa Young, Jennie Weiner, and Steven Wlodarczyk, Leading Teams of Leaders: What Helps Team Member Learning?, Phi Delta Kappan, Vol. 91, No. 4, December 2009/January 2010, pp. 41-45.
I’ve never considered myself a leader. I’ve considered myself in the feedback that I have gotten over my twenty year career – “good teacher”, “student focused”, “knowledgeable” “teacher leader” – with the latter always baffling me. What makes me a teacher leader when I don’t consider myself in the role of a leader? In considering the latter, Donaldson 2006 proposes, “Leadership mobilizes people to adapt their practices and beliefs so that every child’s learning and growth are optimized.” (p.7). Therefore, a synthesis of all that sustained career feedback is true of me – but perhaps I’ve never really been in the right context to really take that leadership ability out of the box and utilize it to the fullest extent – until perhaps now!
On reflection across this course, I have four personal reflections that emerged from discussions and readings during this course.
1. School Culture
I am now back at school in a whole new job role (from classroom teacher to technology coach) and a brand new administration. I will experience first hand what Fullan (2001) called “reculturing”. And this, for the school that I have taught at for eight years, it will be a paradigm shift!
As a school that started in a humble make-shift building in 1985 as the vision of one Mr. Alex Horsley (whom I knew well and was my mentor until his sad and all too soon passing in 2012), this school was the quirky little private school in Buckhead for the children of diplomats and parents that wanted their children to have an International Education. Our focus was on language acquisition – and indeed the founder was proficient in seven different languages, including Mandarin! This was our vision – even through subsequent changes in director to our current director who has been with us for five years. But the vision has changed – and while some of the faculty that remain from the days of Horsley and others that had that vision steadfast in their sights, we are in danger of becoming just another “international school “ with International Baccalaureate (IB), with no clear or real roadmap or idea as to who we are anymore. Hence, the 2014 climate survey, the changes in leadership and my school initiated movement from classroom teacher to enact a descriptor that I seem to consistently be branded with: teacher leader. I'm still not sure what that will look like yet but hopping that my learning in this course this summer will go some way to helping me scope and deliver this role. (Technology Integration Coach 6 – 12). I find myself in a role and at the center of recapturing and a school wide rediscovery of "who we are from who we were". Back to basics! A reflection and a living collective moment to reestablish who we are as a school get a handle on what our focus is. Are we IB? Are we language acquisition? Are we STEAM/STEM? Are we a private school for students in Buckhead, Atlanta, Georgia?
2. School Diversity
The automatic assumption is that, because I am from Northern Ireland, because I have taught in three different countries and that because I now teach in an international school, I must be adept at accepting diversity. I would argue to the contrary. I would argue, however I have seen, in the most part and perhaps mainly due to the contexts for learning that I find myself in in my career what Lareau (2002) called “concerted cultivation” – because I am Caucasian I only observed what the white kids were doing – and when invited to a black fellowship church in North Carolina or offered chitlins by a by a gracious southern host, I found myself alien in a land that I thought I knew. Perhaps I have always lived in what Wise calls “the bubble of privilege”. But growing up in homogeneous Northern Ireland, I would not have described my childhood as privileged. White, yes. Privileged, no! I grew in a different genre of cultural blindness (that of religion) but have seen that even here in the US, I may also have the reverse pinned on how blind my many can be to my culture, although many would argue that we are the same (same geographical region, yes…same culture, absolutely not!). Therefore in my leadership philosophy, my approach to diversity needs to be wider than the socio economic bubble that I find myself in given my current school situation. To move our school forward in this sense, building higher parent efficacy in our school, particularly with parents who have English only as a second or a third language is key. Ironically, our website is only in English – and considering that our working languages that we foster are also French, Spanish and German, there is an argument to be had in helping our communication by providing more literature and information in our “mother tongues”. While diversity goes way beyond language, my leadership philosophy would be to carefully consider the stakeholders at our school. As a school we started back on the first day with this focus - a school wide inclusivity study. Regardless of our faculty, parents, student and community socio-economic status, we are looking to insure careful management of resources and support to fully include those stakeholders.
4. Professional Learning
Professional Development (PD) in my school has developed a well documented and advocated professional development. However, it was very aligned to programmes that would be supported that seem to lend themselves to what the administration believe to be good for future leaders without much evaluation as to how these have actually impacted leadership in the school over the years that they have aligned to these programmes. I've been on many PD offerings - and not lead anything to share that learning post conference. There is still and alignment of our school’s need to have the “sage on the stage” as part of our faculty PD. Tim Wise will return in the fall to assist us with our diversity and climate evaluation self study. As a new “administrative” coach in the leadership role for instructional technology in this school, I confess that I am unsure of how navigate this. I see a “sense of urgency” in that the one to one laptop programme has been in school for over four years; but the faculty are still in a disparity in authentic use of this powerful tool for teaching and learning.
I do know one thing. I do support that we, as a school, went down the road of getting our faculty to think about their SMART Goals annually. This is one point to which I have been glued – that we need, as an organization to revisit who we are, refocus our vision and establish a narrow but clear set of rigorous (but achievable in the context) goals for our roadmap. Thus, in order to really establish my role in the realms of professional development (as really, this is going to be my bread and butter come the Fall!), I will establish my position power by reaching out to the key players to be involved in the technology integration team. Look for expertise across the subject areas – and those personalities that are open-minded enough to fix their sights on an aligned set of goals.
4. Collaboration with Community
Working collaboratively. It’s interesting, but as I completed this particular discussion (on the day that I wrote this paper), a particular professional development session sprung to mind while writing this blog reflection: http://www.devstu.org/lesson-study
Lesson Study is where educators spend a week deliberately planning, reviewing and refining their teaching in a small, collaborative group. What grabbed me about this PD was the real conversations that were being had by the exemplar teachers. I really felt that it was a beneficial programme to enhance collaborative planning in our school. However, when I emailed our Head of Curriculum and Professional Development about it as it was she that introduced our faculty to the concept, she said that it had met with some resistance and we would not pursue further.
While reflecting on this course, I realized that many time I had experienced the classic definition of a transactional leader – really someone who is going through the motions and if there is no gain in his participation for him/herself, then he/she does not buy into ideas. It would seem that Lortie (1975)’s premise of having “autonomy” as the primary source of professional satisfaction is alive and well in many of our school climates. As I navigate this, my learning from this summer may well serve me well. Kotter (2012), in his New Preface to his book from 1996, relates that “the most fundamental mistakes smart people make when they are trying to make big changes, especially implementing high stakes strategies or initiatives, are mostly still the same today” (p.vii). In utilizing Kotter’s eight stage process at an authentic level (and knowing that the two remaining administrators have read and agreed with Kotter’s work) might be a baseline to start my new leadership role. Over the last twelve months, I’ve personally piloted a paper free classroom in our school and recently presented this to over one hundred educators at the International Standards in Technology Education (ISTE) conference, held in Atlanta in July. Lone wolf – yes – but now have the data to show that this works and hope that when I move into the coaching role with some bleeding edgers next year that they will move forward in a more authentic integration of this powerful technology to enhance our teaching and learning across the school. As Dufour (2009) define “a team is a group of people who work together to achieve a common goal” (Sol Tree, 2009) so it must be that I need to working to creating that guiding coalition that helps to hone that vision and enhance the strategies that are being manifested through our school improvement plan. I’m not saying I will be a transformative leader – but I do need to take a confidence stance for our faculty and students to progress.
Thus my Leadership Vision
Vision
As an aspiring leader in my school, I would revisit our current mission and vision with our faculty and review all stakeholder ideas considering our goals as a school and who we believe ourselves to be. I would articulate this in an iterative school improvement plan.
Facilitating Change
In cultivating that our school improvement is likely to be iterative in nature I would build in Kotter’s Eight Stage Process into the facilitation of the likely change that will come about from our reviews of our mission and vision.
School Culture
As our school will be launching an AIS initiative driven by our core values in delivery of our current mission of “mutual respect and understanding in a diverse community” I would actively participate in the project to engage our stakeholders in dialogue around inclusivity and deepen my knowledge and understanding of the National Association of Independent Schools’ Assessment of Inclusivity and Multiculturalism (AIM), which will look to having leaders for the self assessment study and process. I would see myself aligning especially to the group that talks to and in depth exploration of the area of Teaching and Learning given my new role as Technology Integration Coach.
Instructional Leadership / Technology Integration
This kind of goes without saying – and the reason why I combined both into one heading! Next year, I will be part of a team that will embrace both these positions of leadership in a way that will be transformative for our faculty. I will have to show instructional leadership across technology and access teachers that are very nervous of technology to a level of integration that they may not have experienced in their teaching practice before.
Professional Learning
As I aim to broaden the administrative perception of what is “good professional development”, I will use this course and others like it (including MOOC’s) to broaden their understanding of professional learning.
Collaboration with Community
As an established and respected teacher already in my school context, I will yoke the strengths of existing collegial relationships across subject areas to strengthen the adoption of deeper technology integration across teaching and learning in AIS.
Diversity
Knowing that we are still a school representing over ninety-five different nationalities and that we need to look carefully in a formalized study to what we understanding to be cultural diversity, I will take a leadership role in this study.
Ethics
Using the IB Learner Profile as my guide for modeling good ethical behavior in our students, I will develop this Learner Profile as one that faculty can emulate for the benefit of students ethical education and further understanding of this kind of behavior in the International School Community.
References
Fullan, M. (2002). The Change Leader. Beyond Instructional Leadership. 16-21
Peterson, K. (2002). Positive or Negative. National Staff Development Council. 10-15.
Lareau, A. (2002). Invisible inequality: Social class and childbearing in black families and white families. American Sociological Review, 67(5), 747-776. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com.proxy.kennesaw.edu/docview/218796382?accountid=11824
Cucchiara, M. B., & Horvat, E. M. (2009). Perils and promises: Middle-class parental involvement in urban schools. American Educational Research Journal, 46(4), 974-1004. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/200447132?accountid=11824
Solution Tree: Rick DuFour on Groups vs. Teams. (n.d.). Retrieved July 15, 2014, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0hV65KIItlE&feature=related
Monica Higgins, Lissa Young, Jennie Weiner, and Steven Wlodarczyk, Leading Teams of Leaders: What Helps Team Member Learning?, Phi Delta Kappan, Vol. 91, No. 4, December 2009/January 2010, pp. 41-45.