11/24/2013

Personal Philosophy of Educational Leadership

Aaron Bernstein

Personal Philosophy of Educational Leadership Personal Philosophy of Leadership In any transaction, there is a product and a customer. Education is no different. The typical school believes that students are their products and that the community or tax payers are the customers. Educational leaders manage their resources accordingly. However, one definition of product is a good, idea, method, information, object or service created as a result of a process and serves a need or satisfies a want. ("Business dictionary," 2013). A definition of a customer is (a) party that receives or consumes products (goods or services) and has the ability to choose between different products and suppliers. ("Business dictionary," 2013) When considering both of these definitions, one has to be left with the idea that students are not the products, but rather the customers. They fulfill the definition of a customer as they consume and have the ability to choose between products or suppliers (open enrollment and/or vouchers for failing schools). This leaves education as the product that is being consumed and should change the philosophy of any educational leader. My personal philosophy of educational leadership reflects the understanding that education is the product and students, parents, and the community are the customers. It is the educational leaders sole responsibility to harness all resources to produce the best quality product (education), while managing all of the necessary inputs (staff, facilities, materials, etc.). There are many paths to reach this goal. The leader who understands that his / her staff is the most valuable input, and targets all of their efforts towards the staffs ultimate success, will find the creation of the best quality product. The best way to ensure the highest quality product (education), is to have the highest quality staff and teachers. There are two ways to achieve this goal. First, source and hire the best candidates. This requires a proactive effort to keep a pipeline of talent available for current and future needs. This also requires the creation of a work environment that will pull top talent towards the school and keep existing staff from leaving. This is an area where many districts fall short. Most educational leaders are Page | 1

Personal Philosophy of Educational Leadership good teachers and good administrators, but poor recruiters. They select from the talent comes to them via passive recruiting methods rather than actively sourcing new talent. They view recruitment as what a candidate can do for the school rather than what the district can do for the candidate. True A caliber talent has multiple districts that they can choose from. It is the educational leaders responsibility to aggressively sell their opportunity, then deliver on their promises. A forward thinking district would provide training for active recruitment. They would seek out an expert like Peter Leffkowitz to develop an active and relational recruiting strategy which would source, attract, and keep top talent. The second way to get a great product is to develop the existing staff. While this does happen during specific professional development, it also happens daily. An honest, targeted, and persistent drive towards excellence produces sustained results. You cant harness up a team every morning, bringing a different mood or character into the barn. The inconsistency makes your horses (or staff) nervous about what you expect from them. People also lose trust in you when your persona changes daily. (Leffkowitz, 2013) The educational leader must realize that it takes time to build the habits of success, and those habits can start from the top. The commitment for excellence must be sustained and unwavering. Molinaro identifies the hard work that is necessary for the leader and/or educational leader to undertake in order to be successful; You need to commit to tackling the hard work of leadership. You need to have resilience and a real sense of personal resolve to help our company be successful. You will need to set the pace for others in your organization. You cant be a bystander waiting for things to improve on their own. You are prepared to get tough and do what is necessary to make your organization a success. (Molinaro, 2013) Page | 2

All professional development is a function of perceived need, sustained effort, and effective results. Evaluation, which should predominately be conducted by stakeholders (including administrators, but only in relation to their roles as educational leaders (Marshall, 2013)) is necessary to

Personal Philosophy of Educational Leadership maintain focus, but not required to evaluate the overall effectiveness of an educator. Professional development is viewed simply as a tool which may be implemented to various degrees, or not at all, depending on the prevalence of existing teaching methods and their demonstrated levels of success to produce a desired outcome. Perceived need - Perceived need is developed with a combination of data and teacher/administrator input. Extensive data mining, which is the current trend, is replaced with professional judgment. Educators (teachers and administrators), are tasked with identifying trends (strengths and weaknesses), based on data and classroom knowledge. Armed with that information, they seek to identify one or two specific needs. This approach is not only cost and time effective, but greatly increases decisional and professional capital (Hargraves, 2012). Simply stated; educators gather a minimal amount of standardized data, review what they are seeing daily, and determine the greatest area(s) of need. If reading scores are down and teachers are reporting difficulties in class, then the focus is on reading. The same process would be used for math or any other competency. If all is well, then nothing is changed. At most, an educator is responsible for no more than one long-term initiative (e.g. reading). Sustained effort - All initiatives are approached with an extended timeline lifecycle, 3-4 years. This allows time for implementation, reflection, adjustment, remediation, and evaluation without the pressure of immediate results. The desired culture that this shift in philosophy strives to promote is one in which the gap is minded (Pollock, 2012) rather than focused on. The pithy phrase mind the gap has been popularized by the London Underground railway to help passengers heed the uneven space between the subway door and the station platform. Although engineers tested various solutions (such as rebuilding and adding bridges), they decided that the best course of action was to teach passengers to automatically step across the breach Having learned to do so, commuters carry on with their daily business, and there is no need to look to engineers to perform a massive and costly transformation. (p 11) Page | 3

Personal Philosophy of Educational Leadership The assumption that professional development is a tool rather than pedagogy is essential to this approach. Teaching style and professional judgment are not sacrificed to ensure that the professional development de jour has been spotlighted during the formal observation that is required by contract or state mandate. Additionally, the extended timeline allows for overnight success like Apple (20 years), Microsoft (11 years), Yahoo! (3 years), Google (7 years), Facebook (5 years), and Amazon (4-5 years). (Zwilling, 2011) On-going professional development is conducted during the year, formally and informally, with time to reflect on the previous years results. The new dogma of minding the gap allows for an ongoing conversation about what / how progress is being made. Time for reflection allows for the decision to be made to continue the current course of action or add /subtract additional supports as needed. Educators (teachers and administrators) are encouraged to ask for and provide additional training to fill in gaps in knowledge or practice (build a better tool). Effective results - Are students meeting reasonably set goals (No Child Left Behind is not reasonable or reality based for every student in every building in the United States)? Is progress being made when results are viewed over a longer time period? If the answer is yes, then efforts are acknowledged. If the answer is no, then methods are reviewed, changed, or replaced. While quick gains may be realized, the long term results are the goal of the professional development and continue to be at the core of programming evaluations. Evaluation - On-going, informal evaluations are conducted (Marshall, 2013) with the goal of minding the gap. The evaluator (an educator teacher leader or administrator) is tasked with looking for evidence of some methodology that is addressing the need that has been identified by the professional educators. Methods that chosen to supplant the selected professional development are given value provided effective results are realized. Deference is given to the educators skill and Page | 4

Personal Philosophy of Educational Leadership judgment. However, the absence of effective results, over time, triggers the need for discussion and/or remediation. Immediate, informal feedback is used to gauge the effectiveness. Priority is given to the teachers point of view (not the observers) and their self-evaluation of the event of the observation. The observer may share observations from colleagues and offer anecdotal information to help with the reflection process. The purpose of the evaluation is to further the conversation of effective classroom practices in light of the selected professional development schema. Corporate evaluations are conducted annually, with greater intensity, as the program continues. A collection of educators are tasked with evaluating the progress of education and reporting findings to all stakeholders. Educator anecdotal records and observation records are given as much weight as test scores in this part of the evaluation process. The extended timeline is factored in the evaluation of the results with the understanding that this is a process that will take shape slowly rather than overnight. Educator input is used to influence the direction of professional development as both teachers and administrators are viewed as the daily practitioners of any professional development campaign. Page | 5

Personal Philosophy of Educational Leadership

Business dictionary. (2013). Retrieved from http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/product.html Hargreaves, A. (2012). Professional Capital: Transforming Teaching in Every School ISBN: 0807753327 Leffkowitz, P. (2013). Morgan consulting group. Retrieved from http://www.morgancg.com/AboutPeter.aspx Marshall, K. (2013). Rethinking teacher supervision and evaluation: How to work smart, build collaboration, and close the achievement gap. 2nd ed. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Molinaro, V. (2013). The Leadership Contract. ISBN: 9781118635575 Pollock, J (2012). Minding the achievement gap one classroom at a time. Alexandria: ASCD Zwilling, M. (2011). This is how long "overnight" success really takes. Retrieved from http://www.businessinsider.com/guess-how-long-overnight-success-really-takes-2011-3 Page | 6