I am finding myself in one of those “busy” periods of my life. The demands of family, life, and work are keeping me busy. Over the next two weeks I am looking at needing to produce a principal entry plan for my Collaborative Leadership course. Right now I am at EduCon with some of the leading edtech minds in North America. Both of these are leading me to think about the concept of transformative leadership.
I have been thinking a lot about it recently as I think it is a critical skill for the 21st century principal. Given how principals are often in between the intrinsic and extrinsic demands of a school, it becomes really important to be transformative in the face of a world that is transactional by nature. The Educon experience has me really thinking about how to find new ways to deliver transformative leadership as both a technology director and a future principal. I think the question becomes one of how to do it effectively. Here is a list of a few concepts towards defining that:
- Create Expectations
- Understand People
- Care about your school community
- Develop a Positive Culture
- Listen to your School Community
- Create Focus within your school
- Leave your ego at the door
And Most Importantly
- Create a Vision people believe in
Just a few thoughts tonight, but more to follow.
Your time in reading my post is always appreciated and your comments are even more.
I presently enrolled in a course called Collaborative Leadership. It has been great going back to school to further develop my skills and it has been interesting moving from a cohort back to a regular class. However last week I wrote on Facebook something that has come to be quite profound in my mind. In the what’s on your mind box I wrote “Working on a collaborative leadership project, alone. Possible oxymoron territory”. At the time I wrote the statement I was feeling a little frustrated by the lack of collaboration in this course. As time has moved forth it has come to stimulate my thoughts around building collaborative cultures in schools. Our coursework has been very heavy on theory, but very light on developing what collaborative leadership looks like and how to create it. This thought process has brought me to wanting see what this model looks like in schools and how the first year principal can create it.
I have heard people discuss collaboration in schools my entire professional career, but I have yet to see it applied meaningfully. I have always felt that the collaborative culture is a circular one, yet the examples I have seen have remained the ubiquitous triangle with the principal or superintendent leading the collaborative. If the leader is leading collaboration, do people take risks? I have always liked the circular model as people who take risks are safely within a leader-less circle that should be appropriately governed by pre-agreed upon group and process norms.
If people are exposed to the concept of collaboration and its importance, can they actually do it? What about people who have not been exposed to the concept of collaboration? How does the emerging principal create a collaborative culture in school with limited exposure to it? Are there any suggestions out there on how to get emerging cultures to embrace collaboration?
Your time for reading my post is always appreciated and I really welcome your comments. Thanks.
I like to blog, I want to blog, but I struggle to keep up with it. It has been almost 8 months since my last post with so many tales to tell, I will save you from the mundane details of my life. I will share a few key pieces of learning:
1. Switching computer platforms is not easy
2. People just want things to work, no matter how they ask
3. Volunteer work is not easy
4. When traveling with small children, always fly direct and not on Continental Airlines
I am writing today to talk about the continued forward journey of an emerging school administrator. Tomorrow I am starting my CAGS at Plymouth State University. I am still majoring in Educational Leadership, but this time I am planning on addressing my own perceived weakness in curriculum and instruction. Next month I am off to Philadelphia to EduCon 2.2 in hopes of merging my three great passions in education: technology, leadership, and 21st century curriculum. Obviously there will be several easy answers to my many questions.
To school administrators and passerby’s I pose a question to you, when is it time to become a school administrator? I perceive my own weakness in curriculum, but yet when it is often discussed in my school district I am at the table. I feel I have much to offer, but yet I do not want to disappoint those who believe in me. When does an emerging principal need to become a principal?
Happy Friday and thanks for stopping by.
It has been a while since I last blogged. The process of finishing my master’s has seemingly taken much longer than I had expected. Today I find myself wondering about the best way to approach filtering in a school. I can easily see the need to keep kids safe, but I am also wondering from what. In looking at my own district, I am truly beginning to see the value of integrating web 2.0 technologies into the classroom. However most of them are blocked. I control the filtering policy with input from the principals of our schools. We have pretty much stuck to the basic filtering policy as recommended by our Internet service provider with additions and subtractions to the whitelist done as issues arise. This method has always worked for us, but as I emerge from my master’s experience with a different perspective on the entire process of schools. I am left wondering is the internet a friend or a foe?
Last week I had an opportunity to attend a meeting in another school and they had kindly made a wireless network available to us. The problem was that the network was so locked down that I could not even access my email via POP or the web. As the presentation was on technology on how they are effectively using it in their schools, I wondered how such a restrictive policy was allowing teachers to push the limits of their curriculum? However, I was very sure that the school would be a very safe place for my children to access the Internet. Yet, I started to think about George Orwell’s 1984 and how the government surveillance effected the characters within it. Are we teaching students to be thinkers or followers?
A few times during my tenure in my current position I have been brought into a student discipline action to discuss how the filter works or how we could use it to better address the activity for which the student is being disciplined for. As a future principal, I know it is my job to ensure that students are educated in a safe environment. The educational technologist within me wonders about what is a safe environment is. Does CIPA tell us specifically to block sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Ning? The technology-literate principal within me wonders if allowing tools that students are generally more familiar with than the teachers is a good idea to promote classroom growth and curriculum development. I am also feeling cautious about the idea of setting up different policies for different users. Our teachers all have a laptop that does not log directly into our network (they log in locally and most of the laptops are Macs) in order to promote a better user experience, and for selective filter this would be required. Reading notes from other people in similar positions makes it appear that setting up such policies and reporting requires a significant investment of both time and money. As a smaller school district, we simply would have problems affording this. Does filtering help integrate technology or promote ambivalence towards technology?
So here I am fully able to see both sides of the argument and seeing our students caught in the middle of it (as usual). Is solving the problem as simple as just starting conversations and educating students and teachers? How does one convince the administration that might not be as knowledgeable about technology and how it is evolving? Can a school district loosen its filtering rules and still meet the safety needs of every parent? So today this is my dilemma, both as a technology director and an emerging principal.
Graduation is quickly approaching (41 days to be exact) and I have been diligently finishing my work so I can ease through April. After three long years it is going to be something to finally walk across the stage and receive my “diploma” (degrees at Antioch New England are not conferred until July). I feel that I have really put the time into this process and I am already reaping the rewards from it. However my mind is not totally at ease about just resting on my laurels, you see I want to keep going.
I originally graduated with a three-year diploma in Sports Injury Management from Sheridan College in Oakville, Canada. I spent some time as an Athletic Trainer in a private school before making the transition to educational technology 10 years ago. Until I started at Antioch, I guess I was the poster child for an overachiever. I was successful as both a teacher and a technology coordinator. Given that I started as an intern in a private school and worked my way up to being the technology director based on hard work and regular PD courses, I think the idea of becoming an administrator is still really important to me. Hence why I pursued a Master’s in educational administration. As I graduate I still want to move forward into administration, but I feel that I still have some work to do in educational technology and that I need to find the right opportunity as an assistant principal prior to becoming a principal.
My educational philosophy is grounded in the belief that as a principal I must also be a certified teacher. One area of discomfort for me is that I am not a certified Computer Technology Educator. I feel this leaves me lacking in what I can offer my school district both now as the principal and later as a principal. So I feel that it is in my best interest to attain this certification and New Hampshire makes getting certified relatively straight forward. In fact, given that I soon will be a certified school prinicpal I could probably qualify much easier for the Computer Tech Certification, but yet something within me feels that I must move forward to formalize my ed tech competency through either another Master’s degree or Ed.S process. Right now the Ed. D seems a bit far away from me and could be a real challenge for a young family, so I am keeping that on my to do list.
Like Dorothy on her journey to the emerald city, I have come to a fork in the road. On one side the scarecrow is telling me to go this way and formalize my ed tech competency. He then flips his arms and points in the other direction telling me that I can go that way and improve my administrative competencies to become a principal. I feel really torn about this and I am happy that I have an employer who is supportive of my desires to move forward and is willing to fund them. I have kept asking myself what I would rather do and I keep coming back to Dorothy standing in front of the scarecrow. I am hoping that someone in the blogosphere might be able to help.
I will mention a couple of the programs that I have been looking at, but most importantly I think I want to go in a direction right now that does not require me to take the GRE. Some programs require it and some don’t so I have been identifying programs that do not require it or waive the requirement with a master’s degree already attained. I do wonder about the great variance in the cost per credit. Why is it that some schools charge a $170 per credit and others are over $1000? Is that just price gouging or is there a real difference in the content? Another thing, why can’t more schools offer ed tech master’s completely online? If you are to become a “master of educational technology” why do you have to trudge to a classroom? That is so web 1.0. Here are a couple choices I am looking at and I would love to hear from anyone who has gone there or elsewhere who might be able to guide me through my decision making process.
Boise State Educational Technology
University of Wyoming Adult Learning and Technology
University of Tennessee Instructional Technology
Salem State Technology in Education
