Tuesday, July 7, 2015

5 Pillars of Educational Leadership - Which One Do I Stand On?

I feel that of the five practices for effective school leadership, my strength would be creating a climate hospitable to education. I truly feel that this is a foundation that can help foster growth within the other four practices. I feel that this is my strength because I very good adaptive social skills.  I make social relationships a priority within my human interaction because I feel that people are more productive when they feel good about what themselves and what they are doing. Although people mostly see me as just a jovial personality, I possess the social skills that help people put their guard down to join a unified cause. At Genoa-Kingston I have done this through my individual hallway interaction with students as well as when I run the pep rallies. I encourage students to step out of their comfort zone and unify in school pride. This may come because I act so crazy that they can't possibly look weirder than I do. However, I feel that the big thing that comes through is being genuine. I feel like my genuineness shows for my dedication to my school and my goals. I definitely feel that I can do this to establish a common goal and an effective learning environment.

As I reflect on the other four practice i really wanted to analyze what order i would put them in representing my strengths and weaknesses as leader. Creating a climate was a no brainer for the top spot but second place wasn't so clear. I really did my best to apply this to my current situation as a program leader. I feel that I have focused on shaping and expressing the vision of what the band program should be I just never really thought about it as such. I also do think that I do my best to cultivate leaders. I have to privilege of having all 4 levels of students in one big class. This leaves room for plenty of student leaders whether they by student directors (drum majors), section leaders, advocates for the programs, equipment managers and many more things. I have realized the leadership skills I have learned through music that I can apply to every aspect of my life and I want to give those experiences to my students. Improving instruction was a tricky one for me. I really haven't had much of an opportunity to do that in my 5 years of working. This one is unfortunately shifting quickly towards to bottom of my list. I know i do self reflect on my own instruction and modify it when i see the need for improvements. To be honest i should reflect solely on my instruction more. I do pride myself in constant self reflection on both large and small scales however most of that really does deal directly with instruction. It deals more with the program as a whole, curriculum and goals for final products. Last but not least, Managing people, data and processes. This one is split. I do manage people through my music student community as well as my parent booster community and through both of those I look at the effectiveness of the processes and make adjustments accordingly. As for data, my only data small scale money management and Numbers of students with the program. This is only a small fraction of the data that has to be looked at when one is an educational leader. We talked a lot about in our curriculum course and I definitely got a better picture of what a large role data actually plays.

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