Organization and Administration: Reflections on This Course

For my final post in the course, Organization and Administration, I've decided to do a videoblog post. On the heels of the Maryland Society for Educational Technology (MSET) Conference, I am inspired to lead by example. I enjoyed hearing from Chris O'Neal as he discussed how to bring technology to your school by modeling its use.

This video was created using the trial version of Camtasia. I think I am falling in love with this software!

Instructional Technology's Role in the Curriculum

This week's JHU homework prompt is:

· As a school administrator and instructional leader, what instructional technology would you expect to see in the written, taught, and tested curriculum of a school or school district striving to meet the needs of 21st century learners?

Written Curriculum:

As an administrator, I would expect to see objectives in the written curriculum that would allow for flexibility for classroom teacher differentiation. More than naming specific technology, I would like to see learner outcomes that are achievable through a variety of ways, especially through the use of Web 2.0 applications. I would like to see the curriculum itself generated through a shared, collaborative space so that teachers would be able to contribute their ideas for effective practices and network with peers throughout the district. When teachers are given the opportunity to implement best practices in order for their students to learn and be able to accomplish the given standards, teachers can address their students’ diverse abilities. Each student’s strengths are recognized and provided for as the standards are met in a variety of ways.

Taught Curriculum:

As an administrator, I would work to create a taught curriculum that contains a variety of interesting learning opportunities, incorporating multiple technologies for teachers to choose from to deliver the content to their students. Words would be infused into the curriculum guides that would encourage tiered instruction, Socratic seminars, compact instruction for acceleration and a variety of grouping methods for instruction. The written curriculum should encourage the classroom teacher to challenge their students to achieve the objectives of instruction.

Tested Curriculum:

As an administrator, I would like to see a variety of assessment procedures to prevent “one size fits all” approach that is common with high stakes, standardized tests. I would work to see the addition of digital portfolios that contain a sampling of learner products covering instruction from in different subject matter areas, during a specific interval of time. I would like to see the use of video tapes showing student progress such as in a discussion or problem solving situation. Self evaluation by the learner of a completed project or other activity would be facilitated through the use of weblogs. Objects constructed related to an ongoing unit of study, using rubrics the means of appraisal could be uploaded to Flickr, SlideShare, Google Applications, or any number of Web 2.0 applications. The Tested Curriculum would dictate what is to be assessed, leaving the how to the classroom teachers and/or schools. The assessment would be a combination of formative and summative. I would advocate for these additional approaches to testing to ascertain learner achievement.

· What instructional technology would you promote to differentiate instruction for all learners? Consider some of the Web 2.0 tools discussed in Week 3 and some of the tools/ applications suggested in the UDL discussion.

The instructional technology that I would promote to differentiate instruction would not be specific to a particular brand or application, but a category of technology. This would allow for newer generation tools to be applied and prevent the addition of an obsolete technology in the ever changing 21^st Century technology arena. I would group the technology according to data collection, graphing tools, presentation tools, poster generators, translation tools, video and animation applications and rubrics generators. It is difficult to stay abreast of the latest technology available and that is why I would advocate the use of a Wiki or other collaborative site to host the curriculum in order to accommodate the rapidly changing technology landscape.

My Philosophical Beliefs

This week's prompt is the first reflection for the course titled, "Curriculum Theory, Development and Implementation."

What are your philosophical beliefs about the purpose of school, about what subjects should be taught, and about how students learn? How does your work demonstrate your belief?

I decided to answer this question in a visual format, using the Web 2.0 application, Photo Peach. Everyday I learn something new from my personal learning network and this blog post was inspired by Peggy George, an educator from Arizona who loves sharing her Web 2.0 adventures through her blog.

This presentation looks much nicer full screen. Click the full screen icon on the lower right corner of the presentation window.


I hope you enjoyed my presentation. All of the photographs come from Flickr's Creative Commons.
Citations

Finding images in Flickr for inspiration or research is made easier by using the Compfight Webite. Creative Commons is a nonprofit organization that increases sharing and improves collaboration. Many Flickr users have chosen to offer their work under a Creative Commons license, and you can browse or search through content under each type of license.

In addition to the references page which I have embedded as a Scribd Web 2.0 document, I have also bookmarked them on Delicious for easy reference. You can find them with the philosophy_presentation tag. I got that cool idea from another member of my personal learning community, Bethany Smith and a SlideShare presentation that she created.

I hope that in addition to my presentation, my modeling ethical use of information through the inclusion of a reference page, utilizing Creative Commons images, experimenting with Web 2.0 (this is my first Photo Peach preso!), utilizing the knowledge of my personal learning network all exemplify my beliefs in education.

I hope that you have enjoyed my views on Educational Philosophy!

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School Culture

This week, my personal reflection prompt brings together what I have been learning in my Effective Leadership course and what is currently occurring in my school building.

• What impact does the creation of a positive school culture have on school reform?
• How has what you have learned so far in the course shaped your concept of an effective leader?

We have been reading and discussing effective leadership in the context of school reform for six weeks. This week focused on school culture; what it is and how is it formed. When learning about qualities of leaders early in the course, especially, servant leadership and stewardship, I began to understand the consequences of leaders' actions and how they contribute to a positive school climate. Oprah Winfrey was quoted in Daniel Pink's book, A Whole New Mind, "leadership is about empathy. It is about having the ability to relate and connect with people for the purpose of inspiring and empowering their lives." The tone that is set becomes a part of the invisible pulse of the school that resonates throughout the students, teachers, administrators, parents and community. This tone or pulse is the school culture. Without a positive school culture, there will be no desire, impetus or capability to enact school reform.

Today was the first day of pre-service for teachers in my school district. We spent the morning reconnecting with staff that we have not seen for a few months and learning who the new additions are. The icebreaker that we had not only allowed us to stretch our legs, but provided groundwork to reforge old bonds and make new connections. I believe that the leadership team was effective in conducting a morning that energized us and set the stage for new initiatives. We are focusing on the issue of bullying this school year. The mission is to make personal connections with our students to set a climate or culture that does not tolerate bullying for any reason. Among other things, "Our job [is] to galvanize [our] communit[y] to create a pervasive culture of achievement that celebrates and, yes, provides protective cover to achievers, that neutralizes negative peer pressures, and that endeavors to motivate youngsters who scorn academic achievement" ((Price, 2008, p. 4). It is going to be very important for our entire staff to remain focused on this area of concern, use one voice in their interaction with students and parents and be firm with consequences.

Effective leaders are proactive in their interactions with school community and staff. Effective leaders remain ever vigilant to monitor student learning and promote effective teaching. One strategy that our leadership used today was to promote positive interactions with each other. Our staff development teacher introduced the book, How Full Is Your Bucket? by Tom Rath and Donald Clifton. She gave a brief presentation on the salient points of the book; everyone has an invisible bucket--we are at our best when our buckets are overflowing --and worst when our buckets are empty. Everyone also has an invisible dipper. In each interaction, we can use our dipper either to fill or to dip from other's buckets. Whenever we choose to fill other's buckets, we in turn fill our own.

I think our school is on the right track to create a culture of understanding, sharing, empathy as well as a culture that expects rigorous learning and high quality teaching. Effective leaders need to know how well their school is doing and how to continue to motivate a highly successful staff as well as to know when the staff needs to be lifted and motivated, as school culture is not stagnate. How coincidental that my school is working to increase a positive school culture at the same time that I am studying that very thing!

References

Pink, D. (2006). A whole new mind. New York: Riverhead.

Price, H. B. (2008). Mobilizing the community. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

Rath, T., & Clifton, D. O. (2004). How full is your bucket? Positive strategies for work and life. New York: Gallup.

Effective Leadership

This week's blog is centered around two central questions:

• How has what you've learned so far in this course shaped your concept of an effective leader?
  

• Based on what you've learned so far, what are the top 3-5 characteristics you believe a successful principal must possess?

My concept of what it means to be an effective leader has been evolving for several years, even before I enrolled in this course. I had random ideas of a vision of leadership, but nothing concrete that I was able to articulate. I did know a few things about leadership:

1. There can be many leaders in the building/organization besides the main leader.
2. There are different ways that a leader can be effective and it largely depends on the innate qualities of the person as to how they will become effective (drawing on their strengths).
3. A leader cannot do it all by themselves.
   

After being in the Effective Leadership course for 3 weeks, I have some new insights on effective leadership. Just as Leonard C. Burello writes in the preface of his book, Educating All Students Together, "we need to revisit the definition of student success and engage our communities in a deliberative, democratic planning process to determine how we will acknowledge and value new measures of student learning" (2001, p. viii).

1. Administrative leaders must assume a role as a public intellectual and practice servant leadership "based on a deep commitment ot values and emerging from a groundswell of moral authority" (Sergiovanni, 2007, p. 78).
2. Leaders should create a shared vision within their organization/school is what Peter Senge says "fosters a commitment of the long term" (Senge, 2007, p. 11).
3. Flexibility and adaptability are key when it comes to assessing our vision. Leaders need to recognize that "as circumstances change and improve, it is regularly revisited, discussed, wrestled with and reoriented" (Burello, 2001, p. 42).
4. There is a difference between school leadership and educational administration. Educational administrators make is so that school leaders can lead. They can bring about actions that allow the school leadership to achieve their goals. (Burello, 2001, p. 183-184).

As my own definition of effective leadership evolves, I am constantly looking at examples of leadership within my school district and assessing the characteristics that I feel assist leaders in becoming effective.

• Integrity--effective leaders do what they say and say what they do
  
• Honesty--effective leaders say what they mean and mean what they say
  
• Flexibility--effective leaders are not afraid to change/adapt to fit the needs of the situation
  
• Commitment--effective leaders are committed to improving student learning
  
• Realism--effective leaders are able to assess what state their school is in and realize the steps it is going to take to get the school to the point of the shared vision of the school community.

References

Burello, L. C., Lashley, C., & Beatty, E. E. (2001). Educating all students together: How school leaders create unified systems. Thousand Oaks: Corwin Press.

Senge, P.M. (2007). 'Give me a lever long enough...and single-handed I can mopve the world'. In The Jossey-Bass reader on educational leadership (2nd ed., pp. 3-15). San Francisco: John Wiley & Sons.

Sergiovanni, T.J. (2007). Leadership as stewardship: "Who's serving who?". In The Jossey-Bass reader on educational leadership (2nd ed., pp. 75-92). San Francisco: John Wiley & Sons.

Transformational Leadership

This week, one of our individual assignments is to reflect on what it means to be a Transformational Leader. After processing two weeks of assigned readings and interviewing a supervisor on what it means to be a leader, I feel prepared to answer this question!

We are teaching students for a global society in which we have no idea what that society will look like! We don't know what kinds of jobs will exist for today's students or what kind of technology they will be using. We need to examine how schools are organized so that we can provide today's students for this future. The paradigm shift required to make the necessary change to the school organization "demand[s] a fundamental shift of dramatic proportions" (Burello, Lashley, & Beatty, 2001, p. 77). The educational system as it exists now is in crisis. The call for educational reform has existed for decades. A Nation at Risk was published in 1983. No Child Left Behind Act came later, in 2001. Recently, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has been advocating for changes and in his speech at the Forum in Education (2008), Gates said, "big advances only come when committed people study the same problems and build on each other's work." The new work of leaders that will create these advances is the transformational leader. "A new metaphor for leadership must replace the school commandant and charismatic visionary approaches that dominated our conceptions of schooling in the 20th century" (Burello, Lashley, & Beatty, 2001, p. 93).

The idea of transformational leadership will greatly impact school administrators. The system that they inherit today is not the system that they are going to create. Administrators will need to lead in ways that may make them uncomfortable. Peter Senge stresses in his book, The Fifth Discipline, "innovations in education represent a bigger task than educators can accomplish in isolation" (2006, p. 362). School administrators will be required to build a mental model that encompasses the shared vision of their stakeholders. They will need to create teacher work teams and foster trust and sharing. They will need to be patient, nurturing and empowering if they are to succeed. All of this in the context of an atmosphere where parents and community members and sometimes their peers value traditional, yet often out-dated techniques requiring the administrator to "communicate the school's mission clearly and consistently to staff members, parents and students" (Kelley & Peterson, 2007, p. 360). In my own school setting, many teachers are deeply entrenched in the thinking that "it has always been done this way," or "this is how I was taught," and it is very difficult, but not impossible to overcome these obstacles. My principal has allowed our new staff development develop a training program and supports her when the complaints come along. The principal publicly acknowledges her support which reinforces the staff developer's efforts. The staff developer always has a smile, an attitude of "let's go" and is a great listener. I think the principal is doing a great job of allowing the staff developer to lead. When I think of transformational leaders, the descriptors passionate, energetic, enthusiastic and visionary come to mind.

Performing transformational leadership will also impact the school administrator as technology is integrated with instruction. Technology flattens the playing field. Students become the master of their own education and work with their teachers to creatively solve problems. The collaborative, open-source mentality creates a world where everything is visible. Students and teachers reflect in blogs, create wikis to work through the curriculum, and communicate with students and teachers across the globe. This free flow of information sharing and "thinking out loud" can cause anxiety among administrators, teachers and students. My high school was lucky enough last year to receive Promethean Boards for almost every classroom. As exciting as this development was, it caused high levels of anxiety as teachers struggled to adapt the interactive white boards into their curriculum. The most successful teachers were the ones that worked together with their students to create dynamic and exciting lessons. While most of the students were new to Promethean Boards, it was amazing to me how many students were able to troubleshoot, create presentations and teach their teacher how it all works. These conditions can make leadership challenging in schools and this is why I feel that transformational leadership and servant-leadership go hand-in-hand. The administrator will not lead authoritatively, but orchestrate an environment where team building, leadership development, shared decision making and collegiality are valued. It is time for transformational leadership and I for one, am ready!

References

Burello, L. C., Lashley, C., & Beatty, E. E. (2001). Educating all students together: How school leaders create unified systems. Thousand Oaks: Corwin Press.

Gates, B. (2008, November 11). A forum on education in America: Bill Gates. In Bill & Melinda Gates foundation [Prepared remarks by Bill Gates]. Retrieved July 24, 2009, from http://www.gatesfoundation.org/speeches-commentary/Pages/bill-gates-2008-education-forum-speech.aspx

Kelley, C., & Peterson, K. D. (2007). The work of principals and their preparation. In The Jossey-Bass reader on educational leadership (2nd ed., pp. 351-401). San Francisco: John Wiley & Sons.

Senge, P. M. (2006). The fifth discipline: The art and practice of the learning organization. New York: Doubleday. (Original work published 1999)