As a rising junior leader, I see many issues affecting leadership (across a variety of educational organizations). Firstly, you do not really need a plethora of expensive textbooks (some texts so expensive you can hardly afford to purchase them and they have little to no resale value) to notice the ambiguity with the accepted or “ideal” qualities of a leader. Secondly, children – students – are rarely part of the processes that inform curriculum development, except with controlled studies, like guinea pigs. Rarely are they interviewed in age-based focus groups as to how they can inform learning. This is an opportunity, however. Finally, the issue of who really has the power in organizations and what they are charged to do with it. All of the above are key issues that may pose challenges as well as opportunities for today’s educational leaders?
The theme with these issues combined (from above) is comfort with our current season of scarcity, dissent, and blame and in fighting. This makes it increasingly difficult to tackle what “really needs to be done in order to reform (improve) educational outcomes for children.” This is problematic, because it seems as if education is still searching for “the way.” With so many different groups, leaders, political parties, educators, community and business stakeholder, it is amazing there is no widely accepted system of accountability – a party that is readily willing to take on certain actions of accountability. But this is not news.
Economically, we still punish children born in and around poverty (or in the trickling middle class) for having the gall to want to choose where they attend school, and want for it to be as high quality as possible. The notion of educational collaborations, are not being exemplified well in our media. Issues are often mis-linked to race and class when they are not necessarily related at all. And people run and hide when honest conversation about race and class has to occur because it is in our midst.
A new leader might begin to assess the organizational health of their institutions by cultivating a culture of trust. Listening and observation has to take precedence over making sweeping changes and “improvements.” Without trust, it is impossible for a leader to get in and stay in long enough to cultivate a culture remotely conducive to learning.
