Statement of Leadership and Platform of Beliefs

 "Success is not final; failure is not fatal"-- Winston S. Churchill

         

Excellent schools don’t strive towards the end-zone of success;  excellent schools strive for continual improvement. This creates a dynamic environment that requires leaders to purposefully develop leadership intelligences. Three leadership intelligences I have found most important in 21^st Century international education are Pedagogical intelligence, Entrepreneurial intelligence and Collaborative intelligence.

Entrepreneurial Intelligence includes the ability to innovate and step beyond the known. As Personal Project Coordinator, I found I myself in a situation where there were no examples of work when the MYP came out with a new Personal Project Guide. Not only were there no examples of student reports to share, little guidance had yet been provided. I set out to use the new criteria to create my own Personal Project. I figured if I was going to ask the students to do it, I should be able to do it also. So I started on my own personal project, “Gretsch Guitar Modification”. This personal project report not only gave the students an exemplar they could follow, it put me in the role of the student, allowing me to provide guidance for students and helping me to organize the personal project experience in the school to be more successful for the students.

Learning is at the heart of leadership. Pedagogical intelligence includes the leader providing intellectual stimulation to create a culture of learning. Leaders must be students of best practice to bring about instructional improvement. Leaders can engage teachers in instructional improvement through the leader’s involvement in curriculum and instruction. To activate intellectual stimulation As MYP Coordinator at Global Jaya, I Initiated teacher action-research into Approaches to Learning (ATL). Through this action-research teachers focused on one aspect of ATL’s they wanted to apply in the classroom. They conducted research into the latest literature on the practice, set a plan for trying it during instruction, evaluated the results, and shared what they learned with their colleagues. Teachers learned from each other, developed tools for the ATL skills, collaborated on approaches to teaching, and developed a progression of skills to strengthen student learning leading to Grade 6-12, Approaches to Learning Mapping.

Collaborative intelligence includes the ability to nurture relations and build communities. Building an instructional community around a culture of learning requires establishing norms of collaboration that are agreed on and reinforced. Agreed upon norms of collaboration help to avoid the trap of unstated assumptions and the danger of toxic misunderstandings. A Curriculum Coordinator, to help establish agreed-upon norms of collaborating I helped lead the development of the ‘Critical Friends’ peer review and professional growth program. Teachers were introduced to norms of collaboration as critical friends through clarifying and probing questions. This created the place and environment for teachers to learn from themselves and from others without the threat of being judged and with a focus on collaborative and personal growth as part of their professional growth plan.

Each of these leadership intelligences helps to create an environment where teachers and students alike have space to step out of the usual routine and take risks that will lead to learning. Being a leader in this environment requires the leadership intelligences to lead in a school where success, rather than being final is a state of constant improvement; and mistakes, rather than being fatal, are an opportunity to learn and grow.

Educational Leadership Platform of Beliefs, Patrick J. Sweeney

The short, concise answers to the following questions lay the platform for my philosophy and practice as a leader.

What is your definition of a good school? A good school is a collaborative community where learning is the focus. When a school does something, it should be able to ask “How does this promote student learning?” A good school is one where the parents want to send their children, students want to learn, and teachers want to teach.

How can a leader engage as an instructional resource? Leaders must be students of best practice in order to bring about instructional improvement. Leaders can engage teachers in instructional improvement through the leader’s involvement in curriculum, instruction, assessment, and intellectual stimulation of the team. (Marzano).

What is the best curriculum for a school? The purpose of all curriculum and educational programs is to promote student learning. The educational leader wants to leverage the chosen curriculum and program of a school to promote student learning tailored to the vision of the school and the school community.

How can a leader promote academic achievement? Consistently exposing students to high-quality instruction, including best practices in approaches to teaching and assessment for learning, is the best way to promote achievement. Success in these areas is directly related to how much teachers embrace these practices. Developing teachers as teacher leaders helps teachers to commit the energy and resources needed to address these head on to improve achievement (Danielson).

How can communication be effectively facilitated? Communication is the glue that holds together a school. Leaders need to over communicate clarity. Communication is best when it is made actionable with outcomes and “cascades” through the organization. Establishing learned norms of communication, sequencing the communication with a variety of entry points, and leveraging a variety of media and platforms of communication maximizes outcomes by avoiding the illusion of communication (Lencioni).

How can a leader promote collaboration? Collaboration, like communication, works best when norms of collaboration are agreed upon and reinforced. Agreed upon norms can help avoid the trap of unstated assumptions. Using norms of collaboration such as "assuming positive intentions" can help to promote team formation and engagement in growth mindsets (Garmston).

How can schools communicate effectively with the community? Effective communication with the community includes interactivity by giving the community information it can use, not just information it needs. Effective communication with the community means schools ask for and receive information just as much as they give it. This puts the school in a position to be involved in ‘creating’ the story of the school for the community, rather than having the community create it for the school (Lencioni).

How can visible presence in the classroom promote learning? Effective leaders are in classrooms on a regular basis.  Systematic walkthroughs are an effective way of establishing presence. With this approach, the lines between observation, professional support, and promotion of school goals can blend. Systematic walkthroughs send the message that leaders are interested and engaged in the daily operations of the school to actively promote learning (Powell).

What is the purpose of supervision? The purpose of supervision is to enhance achievement. Feedback is the most effective way to enhance achievement. Feedback should confirm instructional norms, reinforce instructional best practice and provide intellectual stimulation. Mentoring teachers through professional growth plans is an effective way of establishing growth mindsets and promoting learning (Marzano).

Why are resources important?  Resource make up school capacity. Resources are the food that feeds a complex organization. This goes beyond books and materials and includes time, space, and access to expertise and professional development needed to enact strong professional growth plans for instruction (Fullan).

How should resources be prioritized? Resources exist for the purpose of student learning.

What are Key Goals upon entering a school the first half-year?

• Building relationships
• Developing interactions that will give me information about the school
• Understanding what is working and understanding challenges

The plan for achieving this includes:

·

1.Pre-Work. Information that can be found out in advance such as policies

2. Staff Interview Plan. Building relations and developing champions

3. Key Milestones. Identifying important dates

4. Key Tasks by Month. Planning what will have to be done

5. Communication Channels. What communication channels exist?

6. Key Inquiry Questions. Based on all of the above, what are the key needs that need to be met?

What is international-mindedness?

International Mindedness is a journey of reaching out to others and interacting with others. The IB Learner Profiles are a map of the journey of international mindedness; being open-minded, inquirers and risk-takers.

What does a differentiated classroom look like?

In a differentiated classroom, instruction looks flexible and purposeful. Differentiation in instruction allows for enough flexibility of activities and assessment that a diverse group of learners will find a good fit most of the time. Differentiation does not mean a separate lesson plan for every student. The four important instructional strategies can promote differentiation:

•  Affirm Identity and build self-esteem (Making use of       student interests and talents)
• Value prior knowledge (Advance organizers, KWL, entry points)
• Scaffolding learning- including writing frames, graphic organizers, etc
• Extending learning- including the use of technology to enrich learning and materials
• Recommended practices include:
• providing examples of work and task-specific clarification of criteria.
• structuring support with advance organizers, graphic organizers, scaffolds
• Collaborative grouping, promoting peer relationships.
• establishing interim deadlines-Chunking of work as opposed to one final deadline (Diploma Programme, 72).

What does meaningful assessment look like?
The value of assessment is how well it promotes student growth and learning. This includes teaching informed by assessment. This focuses schools on assessment for learning as well as assessment of learning. With assessment for learning, assessment begins to look like instruction, deeply involving the students in the process with peer assessment and self-assessment. ( MYP: From Principles into Practice 75; Powell 263-64).

Works Cited

Danielson, Charlotte. “The Many Faces of Leadership.” Educational Leadership:Teachers as Leaders:The Many Faces of Leadership, ASCD, www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/sept07/vol65/num01/The-Many-Faces-of-Leadership.aspx.

Diploma Programme: From Principles into Practice. Cardiff, Wales: International Baccalaureate Organization, 2015.

Fullan, Michael, and Suzanne M. Stiegelbauer. The New Meaning of Educational Change. Cassell Educational, 1995.

Garmston, Robert J., and Bruce M. Wellman. The Adaptive School: Developing and Facilitating Collaborative Groups. Christopher-Gordon Publishers, 2002.

Hersey, Paul. The Situational Leader. Center for Leadership Studies, 2004.

Lencioni, Patrick. The Advantage: Why Organizational Health Trumps Everything Else in Business. Jossey-Bass, 2012.

Marzano, Robert J., et al. School Leadership That Works: from Research to Results. Hawker Brownlow Education, 2006.

Powell, William, and Ochan Kusuma-Powell. Making the Difference: Differentiation in International Schools.  2013.

Smith, Wilma F., and Richard L. Andrews. Instructional Leadership: How Principals Make a Difference. Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, 1989.

Waterman, Robert H., and Thomas J. Peters. In Search of Excellence: Lessons from America's Best-Run Companies. Profile Books, 2015.