EDU 6990 Reflection Two Standard 7

Med. Program Standard 7:

Utilize Instructional Frameworks for Teaching to Improve Practice

Courses Aligned with Standard:

EDAD 6580

Original Assumptions:

While in school and now as a teacher I was unaware of what educational leaders actually did to
lead the rest of the staff. I have always thought they had ideas in their head and implemented
them in a collaborative manner with a site council. Even though I have a good relationship
with the administrators, department head, and instructional coach they never gave much
information about how their leadership skills were really utilized. What I do know about the
basic practices of education was based on Purkey and Smith (1985) views:

1. A school’s central purpose is to teach: the success is measured by the progress made through students’ knowledge, skills, and attitudes.
2. The school is responsible for creating a productive environment.
3. Schools must be treated holistically.
4. One of the most crucial characteristics of a school are the attitudes and behaviors of the teachers and other staff members.
5. The other important characteristic of a successful school is the push for the performance of students.

I only had the general sense of they research ideas and go through councils to see about how it could
be implemented in the school.

Learning Experience:

I was shocked at the mount of work the leaders in education go through. Mintzberg (1973) found
administrators go through these propositions:

1. Administrators and managers do a great deal of work in an unrelenting pace.
2. Administrators make many heavy decisions each day  and usually are based on a similar characteristic.
3. Administrators frequently work with active problems that aren’t nonroutine.
4. They use a lot of verbal communication.
5. They maintain working relationships with these groups: superiors, subordinates, and outsiders.

That is quite a bit of background information on educational leaders that I was not aware of. All the
while they have to lead the school in creating an environment that is nurturing, promotes ambition. As
Owens and Valesky (2015) found, “the vision of a leader is always uplifting, pointing to new directions,
calling for progress from where followers are to where they want to be, and describing how they will
get there” (p. 14).
When it comes to a vision of the school, mine tries to promote teaching instructional practices. As
Owens, R. G., & Valesky, T. C. (2015), “Leaders are not merely catalysts of the ideas of others, much as they
encourage and facilitate participation; they have their own clearly thought-out vision of the future, their
own sense of direction (p. 15). In my school there is a major push to help teachers with their instruction
practices. We want the students to succeed on state tests. Enclosed is a set of resources detailing how the
vision of the school was made by the school and by the district. The educational leaders worked in
collaboration to design the the district and school vision. Using that vision the educational leaders push
to create a stronger learning environment.

In the vision there is quite a bit of work on professional development.  When it is thought about the
leaders of the departments and school administrators work together toward identifying key issues that
can be addressed in professional development. As Blair (2016) notes, “as such, a relationship of trust,
cooperation, and respect between identified teacher leaders and school administrators will be critical to
the success of roles targeted at the ongoing professional development of teachers in a building or school
district” (p. 225). As an educational leader they find those professional development that is very helpful
toward the helping teachers become stronger. Embedded is the vision analysis paper where I looked at
the vision of the school and how professional development and other actions where it pushes for it.

Reflection:

Overall, this experience from the class has enlightened me on how education leaders push for helping
teachers increase their practices. Marzano, Waters, and McNulty (2005) note that successful principals
foster a shared beliefs and sense of community among all parties. They have this balance of improving
teaching practices while keeping a strong community among the staff. As I look to becoming a teacher
leader myself I will strive to keep that balance of creating opportunities of professional development
that pushes teachers to become stronger and still keeping a sense of community and care among others.

Works Cited:

Blair, E. (2016). Teacher Leadership: The "New" Foundations of Teacher Education. New York, NY: Peter Lang Publishing.

Marzano, R. J., Waters, T., & McNulty, B. A. (2005). School Leadership that Works: From Research to Results. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development; Aurora, CO; Mid-continent Research for Education and Learning.

Mintzberg, H. (1973). The Nature of Managerial Work. New York, NY: Harper & Row.

Purkey, S. C., & Smith, M.S. (1985). School Reform: The District Policy Implications of the Effective Schools Literature. Elementary School Journal, 85, 353-389.

Owens, R. G., & Valesky, T. C. (2015). Organizational behavior in education. Pearson.