In my tenure as an elementary and middle school principal, several experiences have been key to my own leadership development. My reflections on these experiences may also provide some assistance in program design.
In one experience, I was given the task of closing an existing elementary school, overseeing renovations to the building, and organising a new middle school which was also being developed as a technology project site for our province. An advisory committee was organised to guide project development with membership from the provincial university communities, teachers' and trustees' organisations, corporate partners, local and provincial government, parents and the local school district. My experiences during the six years of involvement with this project prompted me to reexamine my perceptions of the role of the principal, the nature of effective staff development, and the competencies required of educational leaders.
The aspects of this leadership development experience which had most impact on my professional growth included:
In another instance, I was required to become part of an instructional improvement and employee assistance plan for a staff member. This situation required considerable investment by the teacher, a colleague of the teacher, a Saskatchewan Teachers' Federation executive assistant, our director of education and me in restructuring beliefs about teaching and student learning, in changing personal organisational and planning processes, and in redesigning instruction and evaluation strategies. While the improvement plan involved a variety of other elements, I participated in approximately five hours of observation and conferencing each week with the teacher for an entire year. In addition there were many other meetings with the teacher, the colleague, the executive assistant and the director. At the end of year, I was required to write a report documenting our work, describing the instructional improvement of the teacher and making recommendations for the future placement of the teacher.
The aspects of this leadership development experience which had most impact on my professional growth included:
In a third situation, I became part of reviewing school system policy regarding teacher supervision, evaluation and employee assistance at the same time as developing system policy for administrator supervision, evaluation and employee assistance. Considering it an opportunity to learn something and to also improve present practice, I volunteered to chair the committee reviewing the teacher professional growth policy. This committee included teachers, consultants and both school-based and central office administrators. We were constrained only by school board regulations for policy review. Because of what seemed to be obvious connections with teacher professional growth and because I had not received any sort of comprehensive, written assessment of my ten years of work as principal, I also volunteered to be a member of the committee to develop system policy for administrative appraisal. In creating the administrative appraisal policy, our committee developed a local profile for leadership using the process described by Begley (1995).
The aspects of this leadership development experience which had most impact on my professional growth included:
In the fourth experience, I began searching for technical assistance related to computer networks and in the process developed an informal partnership with a family who eventually provided invaluable assistance to our entire school system. Because of a suggestion from a staff member, I invited a parent from one of our feeder schools, who also happened to be one of the network managers for a local telecommunications company, to visit our school. I asked for his suggestions, and he volunteered to show me his company's network system. His interest in computers and in the technology opportunities his children would have in our system was combined with my need for practical, inexpensive solutions to computer access for students and staff. I also was very curious about how technology was being used in business.
During the course of this 4-year partnership, he (with the assistance of his wife and daughters) planned our network restructuring, helped install nearly 50 new computers, created an intranet website for our school, provided inservice to our staff, organised a computer club for our students, and was an on-call technology trouble shooter for our school. Most of this assistance happened on a volunteer basis in the evenings and on weekends where we worked together with one or two other staff members. In return he learned about technology in an educational setting, had a reason to learn HTML programming, developed skills as technology trainer for teachers, and a gained a reputation of technology guru. As a result of his work with our school, he was hired for a short term as a consultant to upgrade the networks in our system and to provide some training. Now, he is currently employed by our school district as the system technology coordinator and also coordinates the community Internet access for our city.
The aspects of this leadership development experience which had most impact on my professional growth included:
These were all active, authentic, collaborative, supervised learning experiences in an environment which promoted creative thought and risk-taking behaviours. There were a variety of perspectives presented and norms to support openness of information and sharing of expertise. There was also considerable coaching or mentoring involved. Each of these experiences required that I be reflective and present my findings in a written format, but the learning was accomplished through intense, face-to-face interpersonal interactions.
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