Organization and Administration Reflection

1. This course has given you an opportunity to practice a range of leadership strategies when making decisions that require you to think politically, orchestrate collaboration among all stakeholders, and remain steadfast in your original vision. What do you envision to be the pitfalls that you might face as a first year principal, and how will you implement the strategies learned to overcome the pitfalls?

This course has given me an opportunity to practice crucial steps in implementing a vision, how to apply best practices, manage an educational organization, and how to act with integrity, fairly and ethically. All of these characteristics help create a strong transformational leader capable of bringing about positive change to any institution. After creating the “look for” documents and completing the administrative action plan, I was able to figure out implementation strategies that would facilitate a progressive movement at my school, Bluford Drew Jemison. However, with implementation come potential pitfalls that may cause us to reevaluate strategies we had planned. Some pitfalls that I can see occurring are:

1.   The school staff and administration may not have the skills, knowledge, and capacities for effective teamwork.

2.   Lack of time and ability to create a fully functional strategic plan for our school.

3.   Extensive staff development may be necessary to institutionalize new instructional approaches.

4.   Performing a needs assessment of our facility will require a highly committed staff, effective teamwork, and time to fully carry out all of its requirements.

5.   Lack of funding to supplement teachers and other staff during the vision implementation process.

6.   Creating buy-in for community partnerships and parental support.

7.   Lack of time to perform thorough observations for all teachers all year long.

It is likely that problems will surface during the change process. When problems arise, I will utilize both my administrative team and departmental leaders to discuss solutions in order to accomplish our goals. Also, I will continue to peruse research and books that are specific to managing the change process and the people that are involved with it. I will also discuss strategies with fellow principals and seek guidance based off their own experience and advice for any particular problems we are having. Outside agencies may also have to be called in to help facilitate the creation of the strategic action plan and to properly arrange a needs assessment for our school. The key points to the change process are constant evaluation, communication, and developing a clear plan that outlines what we are trying to accomplish and how we are going to do it.

2. How has this course prepared you to use twenty-first century leadership skills as you model a new culture for collaborating, analyzing student performance, and continually reflect on instructional practices, school climate, and quality decision making?

       This course has taught me how to develop a strong action plan that can be used to help create significant changes at our school. As a principal, it is our job to continuously develop ways to evaluate the system and determine how we will meet the goals of our vision. One of the most practical skills I learned as a future leader is the development of teams. My school does not currently use leadership teams, instead the principal works alone with her administrative aids to develop goals and ideas for the school. Using a leadership team that consists of departmental leaders and administrators will allow the decision making process to be more democratic in nature and also more efficient. Developing a strong leadership team is the driving force behind the change process, without one change will be difficult and very hard to manage. I also learned the importance of using research to evaluate and to progress instructional practices. I feel that you will create not only more buy in from the teachers when you can illustrate that your ideas are backed by sound research but you will also be adding methods that actually work. School climate can be measured through surveys and informal conversations with staff and the leadership team. Quality decision making must be done by talking and investigating with others to develop the best possible solutions. We live in a democracy and there is no reason why our work place should become a dictatorship, where the only opinion that matters is the one in your head. When people are talked to and their thoughts and opinions are taken into consideration most will respect the finalized decision even if it is not in perfect alignment with their own views.