To postulate or predict the future seems a carnal waste, when so many young people’s lives are at stake…daily. It isn’t about me, not about us. It is about the student. Funny, some students are rarely asked what they want, feel, think, or need; but that’s for another blog.
Perhaps its high time I hone in on my fledgling philosophy of instructional leadership, which one expert defines as “actions that a principal takes, or delegates to others, to promote growth in student learning” (Flath, 1989).
Too many authors, educators, politicians and scholars, still do not and cannot agree as to what such a leader really should be. The many definitions and terms are swimming around higher education. For me the terms “learning leader” or “seed planter” are most fitting.
It looked easy enough, as I have worked with many learning leaders and their jobs seemed effortless. Just sit at your desk. Act strong. Make swift decisions and wear a suit. Most of my principals, throughout MPS and beyond, led from their office desks. Why oh why can’t I?
It seems futile. I see my desk in the morning and then, poof, I don’t. I feel the need to see and be getting to know those I work with, lead.
As a future (and current) instructional leader, (in training) preparing the generations, as a High School [teaching] Principal, I find this type of “you gotta learn as you lead” leadership training and education awesome, unyielding, yet, a somewhat rewarding journey.
It has been six months since I began this position and at this mid-way point, it is difficult to measure, whether or not, I have met with any major successes within the organization.
Sure, everyone has full faith in me. “You’ll make a great principal,” my former boss told me. I wish I knew what he knew, that made him issue such a statement.
“You are doing fine,” I hear from my co-workers and even my supervisor (when there is time to supervise). How do they know? Why then does it feel so bad, if I am doing so good? Why are my efforts mis-perceived, misjudged?
I pride myself as a communicator, a usually effective one. For one expert, “effective communication is inseparable from effective leadership,” (Stack-Jones, 2004).
My Bachelor of Arts degree in mass communication and my certification/licensure in professional communication do not (alone) guarantee those I am charged to communicate with will hungrily follow my budding leadership. It’s a set up.
I know what good leadership looks like on paper and I understand some of the tenants that build the “leading house.” Knowing who I am is not enough.
One blogger, Michael Smith, in the Principal’s Page, begs the question “Is it possible that the college curriculum used in training administrators isn’t enough to prepare principals for the job?”
He furthers, “college classes and professors are great, but they can’t give us all the answers and prepare us for everything. Mainly because no one knows all of the questions or situations that a principal may face on the job” (Retrieved from http://www.principalspage.com/theblog/archives/WHAT-MAKES-A-GOOD-PRINCIPAL-AND-OTHER-QUESTIONS-THAT-CONFUSE-ME).
And believe me, this school year; I am facing more personalities than “The Three Faces of Eve,” (1957), (for our 80s South Milwaukee High School play, it was “The Many Faces of Eve”).
I know me: as a leader, I am smart, resourceful, collaborative, spirited, adventurous, intuitive, risk-taking and sensitive to the needs and feelings of others. I am a go-getter, resilient, direct, passionate and professional. Sometimes I cry. This bothers others more than me. I believe it just shows that while I am in charge, I have a heart. As an instructional leader, I am still acutely human.
That humanness occasionally takes over when every other gift goes unopened or refused. Or when hurt kids hurt kids. Communicating to, with and for them can feel impervious. It breaks my heart, so sometimes I cry.
That, Smith says is the problem, “the most challenging part of the job is dealing and working with people, which is terribly hard to learn out of a book. Thus, some people are successful in school administration and some are not.”
It was a comfort to learn of someone else’s “real life” takes on the role of instructional leader. It is not an easy one to do or define. Nor is every administrator earning great amounts of money. Some new principal’s were just “people” a short time ago, filing bankruptcy, climbing out of poverty and donating plasma for a cool $50. Forgive me…I digressed.
So I know who I am as an instructional leader. I know some interventions and accommodations. What I don’t know is, if I am fit for this challenge of “cooking this gumbo?” I don’t know if who I am, suits the environment I am in.
But, “Ain’t I a leader” – still? (Sojourner truth, asked years ago, “Ain’t I a Woman?”).
For me, my understanding of the following four concepts, lead my philosophy on instructional leaders:
· Good leaders are the change they want to see (this won’t always be welcomed)
· There is little value placed on intuition in leadership because it can’t be measured or evaluated
· What I don’t know, I have to teach myself, even if I don’t know what I don’t know yet
· Leaders are in fact born. Then they are made. Then they are re-made. Often they are re-made again…again.
I don’t know how a leader can lead unless she knows, interacts and understands those under her tutelage. This seems common sensical, however, there is little time for learning, when pressing expulsion decisions need to be made, budgets need monitoring and staff begs for inspiration and change (though the change they desire rarely happens quickly, while the environment may be bellowing for swift change).
This is another source of frustration – and disconnect during my current course of graduate studies in instructional leadership, “how to lead when you don’t know how to lead (in that environment) and no one has time or resources to teach you?”
I find myself in this situation often. Promises of a job, and training to go along with it. Then when you are in the job, suddenly training is a luxury that you must defend the need for.
Similarly, being a full-time student, engaged in the on going learning of the science of “principaling” (White, 2011) might have been a bit much. This was a greater career transition that I ever imagined and planned for.
I’ve been asked many times as a new leader, from would be mentors, “what do you need?” It is a query that I am unprepared for. I don’t know what I need. I need to time. If I knew what I needed, I would be addressing the need. If I had to be firm and make a judgment call on what I really need, I say, I need time.
Time to gain what John Arul Philips says is “underlying other areas of knowledge, a deep understanding of on how humans learn.” This definitely takes time.
Time, outside of the classroom and degree producing academic lessons, to translate what I have learned into what I know, into what I need to do. I am finding the dots difficult to connect.
That is the trick. How do I enlist others, (supervisors, school board members, colleagues, teachers, students, family, community) within my instructional leadership vision, which isn’t mine really, but belongs to the schools legacy? Not sure exactly, as they seem to be begging for instant change.
“A principal can’t enter a school and start making changes. This is a recipe for certain failure,” (Arul Phillips, 2011).
I have more questions than answers. Readings don’t (yet) sink in. Projects, assignments and discussion boards, bleed into each other, my teachers need support and “big wheels keep on turning.” No time for learning.
Boy George knew it. He called it, way back in the day! “Time won’t give me time…” (http://www.lyricsfreak.com/c/culture+club/time_10073793.html).
Success stories, testimonies, case studies, model successful schools, and on the job coaches, are keys to mastering this instructional leading stuff.
I wish there was time to acquire, learn and build a recent, ripe repertoire of facts and figures theoretical on at-risk learners, highly mobile youth and keep it at my fingertips.
I long for time to truly study relevant research and focus.
As I work though, I learn. Formal education vs. experiential learning? Neither trumps the other; just furthers my tangled philosophy of instructional leadership.
Ultimately, my real philosophy, “It just depends.”
