A healthy, safe, and focused learning environment is reflective of the leadership in that school. Without proper leadership any school, or district, is like a rudderless ship, wandering aimlessly. Direction and purpose comes from the vision of those in leadership and can guide the school community back on course, moving towards the future.
That kind of strong, effective leadership comes from administrators who are consistently learning and developing themselves. Building a community of learning from the top down is important to students and staff alike. Professional development workshops are therefore crucial to the continued betterment of the professional through both learning and networking possibilities. Through my experience I have sought impactful and relevant professional development workshops, online classes through ASCD, and, during the Covid-19 pandemic, webinars. Educational leaders and administrators should consistently attend powerful and relevant seminars and workshops in order to apply those energizing ideas to the growth of the school. In this way, an educational leader will gain the capabilities to lead workshops and sessions at their school to aid in growth and improvement of their staff. They should be able to draw on the most recent trends and findings in education to enhance all performances within the school.
Strong and effective leadership is also reflective. Over the years I have learned to be more reflective in what I do, professionally and personally. Always trying to improve my instruction, lessons, and unit, I understand the value of reflecting on what has worked, what has not worked, what needs to be updated or improved upon, and how I can enhance student response to my instruction. As an administrator, opportunities to reflect should come from interactions with district level supervisors, but also from daily interactions with teachers, staff, and students. We do not always get it right the first time, but daring leaders learn from experience and strive to get it right, or better, the next time.
A strong leader knows how to communicate with all stakeholders. Properly communicating ideas, plans, and vision also cultivates a healthy school culture and climate. Part of proper communication is not only knowing how to talk with staff, students, parents, and other stakeholders. Daring leadership is knowing how to ask the right questions, knowing when to listen, and when to listen closely. Far too often leaders can dominate a conversation without ever hearing the other side. Proper communication is key to the success of an effective educational leader.
Inequity in the educational system that is always present has had a strong light shined on it over the last year. With the Covid-19 response, calls for racial injustice to be addressed, and violence in schools, from bullying to school shootings, we have a plethora of issues in education. Over the last 16 years of my career I have worked in a charter school in an urban setting in Bergen County, New Jersey. The demographics have changed from predominantly African American to Hispanic. Cultures may differ, but needs do not. As a white male who teaches history to students in grade 6-8 I have made it a personal mission to assure the curriculum is reflective of our students. With the new student learning standards being released in June of 2020 for Social Studies, along with nearly every other subject, and the expectation of updated curriculum being written by September 2022, it is imperative to create and mold a curriculum reflective of the students and not myself.
Many students and families have been negatively affected by remote and hybrid learning during this time. They are predominantly in lower socio-economic levels and people of color, and in extremely rural communities, nationwide. Amongst other struggles, availability of technological tools has been an issue. As educational leaders we need to be ready to aid and assist those families with devices, tools, and access. We need to hear those cries for help where kids are hungry for food, social contact, and quality education. Our jobs as educational leaders are to find the valuable resources in our communities for those families. The economic inequalities have had direct, negative, impacts on the inequities in education. Many are still figuring out how to assist the best we can. We must listen to those who are asking for aid, and be ready to move beyond listening to action.
I hold myself to high standards when it comes to my work and have been, through my determined and solution-oriented mindset, able to consistently reach those levels of achievement. Education is highly valued in my philosophy as a teacher, and a leader. Over the years my pedagogy has changed, as I have transitioned away from the typical textbook for most of my lessons. In order to create a more innovative curriculum, I have been using more digital resources created by other teachers, as well as using resources from the Stanford History Education Group, and the DBQ Project. Since I started in the middle school social studies role I have become a better writing teacher than I had previously been. Since implementing document-based question essays in Social Studies I have grown as a “writing teacher”, and so have my students. Teaching during the pandemic has taught me more tricks and tools using technology and digital resources for instruction, assessment, and recording data.
How I assess student progress and success has also changed over the years. After reading Myron Dueck and Thomas Gusky, as well as Robert Marzano, Douglas Reeves, and Susan Brookhart among others, I have tried to model some of the assessment and learning according to standards-based grading. A few years ago, while still using the textbook for the majority of our lessons, I adopted the use of a unit plan based on Myron Dueck’s “Grading Smarter, Not Harder”. The unit plan served two purposes for my students, an anticipation guide and a study guide. In tandem with the unit plan I implemented two other policies in my class which also showed greater academic success in my students, a retake policy, and recording majority of the failure grades no lower than 50. The retake policy, also from Dueck, was set up initially for any student who scored between a 70 and 90 to retake at their, and parent, choice. Anybody below a 70 must retake the assessment. All retakes were a different assessment, and sometimes included more short answer writing. Many kids performed better. Before long, less and less students needed to take the retakes as their initial scores increased. The policy of recording any very low failing grades as just a 50 (noted on our SIS for that assessment with the initial score and the fact it was recorded as a 50) gave many struggling students hope, and a feeling that they can in fact do well. More students had a vested interest in doing well, rather than just give up. Samples of the unit plans, tests, and test tracking form can be found here.
A healthy, safe, and focused learning environment and workplace begins with it’s leadership. The visionary team at the top greatly impacts the culture and climate as they communicate and listen to their staff and stakeholders, reflect on the successes and failures, and are not afraid to be a daring leader and never stop learning and teaching. Courageous conversations about inequality, adaptations to the curriculum, and the vision and direction of a school may not always feel comfortable, but they are necessary. Effective and strong leaders are not afraid to have those conversations as they work to take their schools forward into progress and the future.
Footnotes:
http://www.ascd.org/Publications/Books/Overview/Grading-Smarter-Not-Harder.aspx
https://tguskey.com/solving-problems-zeros-grading/
https://tguskey.com/wp-content/uploads/Grading-2-The-Case-Against-Percentage-Grades.pdf
https://www.edutopia.org/blog/when-grading-harms-student-learning-andrew-miller