Nothing succeeds without leadership yet the nature of the relationship between administration and staff is often strained. I acknowledge that there are bad administrators and bad teachers that can magnify small issues, but you rarely hear of an outstanding relationship in our profession. If you do it always seems like some neverland that is far, far, away from our reality.
I say this because I am teacher and I only ever hear the teacher side. I should say I hear the negatives more often than the positive because those folks always seem to speak the loudest. Yesterday I had a meeting with our district superintendent and our curriculum director. Honestly, I prepared for war. Occupying a new position, I wanted to know what my role was going to be and what, if anything, they planned to do to support my efforts. To my surprise, my questions were answered completely and politely.
I went in to fight for the teachers and found out that was precisely what the administration was going to do. In fact, the three of us spent over an hour and half brainstorming and hashing out specific, measurable goals for the express purpose of helping teachers change instructional practices.
Here is what came of our meeting:
2007-2008Technology Integration Specialist
Goals
1. Identify teacher proficiencies
-Create and implement a tool to measure teacher competencies
2. Establish a common technical language or vocabulary
– Use meetings, web tools, and email to build awareness of staff and faculty
3. Hold one informal discussion about technology education at each building
-Communicate with building principals finding an opportune time to speak to staff and faculty
4. Implement and support teacher/parent/student communication through web presents
-Increase teacher web pages by 30+ through face to face meetings and workshops
5. Maintain four differentiated learning experiences throughout the year
-Groups of below basic, basic, proficient, and advanced. Offer professional development appropriate for each group (according to data gathered by goal #1)
6. Establish two networked learning communities for collaboration and reflection
-One group for elementary and one for the middle school using web tools for social networking. Connect teachers and myself to continue discussions beyond face to face
7. Establish community academy
-Partner with SRO and community organizations to hold community awareness meetings about internet usage and internet safety
It’s amazing what a civil conversation was able to accomplish. For me it was both a measurable set of goals, but also a measure of respect between professionals. How do you define quality leadership?
