Principals and teachers, as well as students , will need to be seen as active energetic, ‘users, seekers and creators ‘ of their own learning, to slightly adapt a phrase from the New Zealand Curriculum. Leaders create powerful inspirational stories that give others permission, or courage, to act.
Key roles of such creative leadership will be;
1 To see leadership as one of providing direction -an enlightened view of the future. Leadership is an issue of purpose not personality.
2 With this in mind, once the direction has been clarified, the three most important requirement of leadership are: communication, communication ,communication.
3 Leaders have to have a recognisable point of view if they are to challenge current expectations.’It is what we know already that often prevents us from learning’, Claude Bernard. Leaders never adopt they adapt - everything is judged according to the schools vision, values and shared beliefs. Such leaders know when to say no - they control their change agenda.
4 Leadership is all about purpose. It is purpose that creates consensus, commitment and collegiality.
5 Leaders focus on making explicit to the wider team what is important. To do this they limit and focus innovations valuing clarity and doing fewer things well; quality not quantity. Such clarity reduces overload complexity and provides a sense of security and hope which , in turn, develops empowerment and improving of decision making.
6 Leaders manage the heart; they say thanks to those who have made the effort; they model the way.
7 Leaders always expect the best and expect everyone to continually improve; they do this by clarifying expectation and by building an environment of trust.
8 Leaders treat others with empathy and apply the ‘golden rule’ in all their interactions. They must be seen as trustworthy and must practice what they preach
9 Leaders ensure all understand what criteria staff members have to live up to and how success is to be judged. See point 2
10 Leaders hold people accountable to agreed commitments even when it would be easier to ignore.Leaders show moral toughness, seeing any conflict as an opportunity to focus on what is important.
11 Leaders give recognition to those who show initiative or appropriate behaviour building on strengths member have by continually providing feedback and encouraging sharing.
12 They support those who need help the most - providing whatever help is required.
14 And they encourage leadership by all to achieve the school’s vision.
From the “told you so” file …. I have it on very good authority that the MoE have indicated they will challenge in court to get access to e-AsTTle data. Particularly with a change in government this is a real concern (or at least I believe should be!) for us all. League tables anyone?
What does this mean for AsTTle though? After such a big investment it is still a bit of a monolith …. time consuming and sometimes difficult to administer. Papaer based. Multi choice … how useful will it be in the future? Watch this space I suppose …
Of the teachers who had high college entrance exam scores, almost a fourth of them leave the profession within a decade. In contrast, only about 11% of the individuals with low scores leave the teaching profession within 10 years. Similarly, more than a third of the teachers with low college entrance exam scores are still teaching a decade after they started, while only 15% of the teachers with high scores are still teaching ten years after they began (Anderson & Carroll, 2008; see also Guarino, Santibanez, & Daley (2006), who note similar results for university selectiveness and certification exam scores). In other words, the percentage of teachers with lower academic ability increases in schools over time. The brightest go elsewhere.
and this comment was left by an 8th grader on the original on youtube:
I agree, I am an 8th grader in the US and are school really needs to kick up the tech program, all we do with computers is use them for typing reports. I cant even take a tech class, or get into a tech club because there are none available. So thank you for the video and I hope this changes the mindset of some schools.
Do take the time to read the comments at the bottom of this post - just about as interesting!
Last week in his post, Dr. McLeod shared information about less-than-stellar candidates who enter the colleges of education and eventually the ranks of teachers. If Entrance Exams are to be held credible, and if the statistics are to be believed, then we have a situation of weaker candidates entering teacher preparation programs and the most capable teachers leaving the classroom after only a couple of years. These trends will clearly have an impact on student outcomes. If this trend continues, Dr. McLeod poses the question, “Now what?”
I would begin my answer with a rhetorical question: “Who ultimately controls the quality of the teaching that occurs on our campuses each day?”
If you do not agree that it is the Principal, quit reading now.
If the Principal is properly fulfilling their primary responsibilities of supervision and leader of instruction, then anything less than exemplary teaching is their fault. Forget the consultants, the department heads, the personnel office, or even the superintendent. The ONE person who should KNOW what is happening day-in and day-out on the campus is the principal. And if a teacher doesn’t know their subject, isn’t planning effectively, can’t maintain discipline, and doesn’t relate to kids…in short, they just cannot teach, the principal should know it and should get rid of that teacher.
Maybe I cannot control many of the factors which cause weaker candidates to apply for entry into college education programs. And maybe I cannot prevent the best from leaving for better pay elsewhere. But I can control the quality of applicant I will interview and the quality of teaching I will allow to remain on my campus.
Without apologies, I will maintain that if a school has less than effective teaching, it has a less than effective principal. And if the less than effective principal is allowed to stay, then the district has a less than effective superintendent. Read the blogs. Read the ASCD publications. Read the literature out there. There is nothing new. We KNOW what we should be doing.
Whether it is firing teachers, assigning them to areas where their strengths can best be applied, hiring alternatively certified staff, or watching the data to insure that each teacher is a value added to the process…The biggest problem we face in education today…the single largest obstacle to improving the quality of teaching is that we have way too many principals who - for whatever reason - are frozen in their tracks.
That’s right…I said it…We have way too many principals who talk the talk, can quote the research, can write erudite blogs, but who can’t lead a group of teachers in a straight line down a hallway. Maybe I’m just tired and worn a little thin here at the end of the year. But I’m tired of hearing my colleagues gnash their teeth, whine, and complain about issues which are screaming for action - and all of which are under their control.
As a principal, I am the first to admit that maybe the best thing I can do sometimes is to shut up and take action.
Stop making excuses. If you have bad teachers, get rid of them. Quit taking the path of least resistance. Grow some thick skin and a backbone and start documenting your weak staff. Have courageous conversations with you mediocre teachers.
One of the greatest ad slogans of all time truly applies here:
Just Do It!
Quite a challenge here….. this blog is written by school administrators in the ‘States. One I will be adding to my Bloglines based on this post!
Young people who consistently participate in comprehensive, sequential, and rigorous arts programs are:
- 4 times more likely to be recognized for academic achievement
- 3 times more likely to be elected to class office within their schools
- 4 times more likely to participate in a math and science fair
- 3 times more likely to win an award for school attendance
- 4 times more likely to win an award for writing an essay or poem.
Source: Americans for the Arts (www.artsusa.org).
The arts provide children with:
- different ways to process information and express their knowledge
- the ability to think creatively in areas like math and science
- the ability to be independent and collaboration skills
(source: Young Audiences, Inc. www.youngaudiences.org)
The arts also:
- teach children to make good judgments about qualitative relationships.
- celebrate multiple perspectives - showing students that there are many ways to see and interpret the world
- make it clear that neither words in their literal form nor numbers exhaust what we can know. The limits of our language do not define the limits of our cognition.
- help children learn to say what cannot be said. They must learn to reach into their poetic capacities to find the words to describe how the work of art makes them feel.
(source: National Art Education Association website - www.naea-reston.org/tenlessons.html From Elliot Eisner’s book: The Arts and the Creation of Mind)
Time to look/listen to the Ken Robinson TEDTalks video again …..??
There has been a buzz over the last few days about NY city education Dept banning employees from puting blog urls (etc) in their email footers. Lisa Nielson who is the professional development manager for educational technology at the NYC Department of Education seems to have prompted the ban. Ha …. now theres an irony. Her blog is interesting reading! Take the time to have a browse….
The recent entry on digital footprints and being responsible is very good! Good points for all educators to ponder…
Five ideas to enable educators to develop and model a purposeful and professional digital footprint.
1-Model responsible footprinting with your own practices in blogging, commenting, social networking, and picture posting.
2-If you have established a professional blog, share it widely and proudly such as placing it in your email signature (if your employer will let you) and as Jeff Utecht suggests include your blog url when you comment on others blogs and in other forums. This enables others to see best practices and is a great way to get the conversation started.
3-Google yourself (aka ego surfing). If you have something posted online that you’d be uncomfortable having a current or future student, parent, colleague, or employer find, delete it (if you can) or request that it be deleted. There are ways an aggressive internet detective can still find this information, but most won’t go through the trouble and the mere fact that you deleted it shows some level of responsibility.
4-If you do have online personal information and/or interests you wouldn’t want discovered, use an unidentifiable screen name/avatar. This means you may need to update your screen name/avatar in your existing online presence.
5-Engage in the conversation and professionally comment, reply, and present online, onsite, and at conferences.
Hopefully these ideas are helpful for some readers and I’d love to know others experiences with negative or positive repercussions from digital footprints. If this topic is of interest click the following links from a 20-something career expert who shares another perspective on why the lines between personal and professional lives should be blurred and why the whole idea of our lives being available for public display is actually pretty cool.
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