Happy Holidays

All of us in the Department of Educational Leadership in the Bayh College of Education at Indiana State University would like you to know how very fortunate we are to have you as colleagues and friends in education.

You keep us relevant!

We hope that you will spend the next few weeks enjoying quality time with family, friends, and loved ones, and we look forward to sharing our “five-minute reads” with you again after the New Year.

Seasons Greetings!

The Principalship: Just How Hard Could It Be?

The Principalship

Just How Hard Could It Be?

By Adam Bussard

Superintendent

Brownstown CUSD #201

Doctoral Student

Indiana State University

&

Ryan Donlan

Assistant Professor

Department of Educational Leadership

Bayh College of Education

Indiana State University

           

            The duties for building principals are endless, as it seems that the current perspective in K-12 education is that principals must shoulder quite the burden, indeed. Responsibilities such as psychometric compliance to ever-moving standardized testing targets are adding substantial time, work, and stress on some of our greatest leaders.

Don’t get us wrong, some of the accountability pieces put in place the last several years are good and help principals ensure through the evaluation and supervision of their teaching staffs the best possible education for students. The question is though, “Is it fair to our principals to expect that they need to assume ALL responsibilities as instructional leaders along with responsibilities of running a building and tending to the needs of a community?

As Fullan (as cited in in Pepper, 2010) stated, “Never before has a school principal’s job been more important and never before has the job been more difficult. Today’s school leaders are caught between current expectations of improving test results and expectations of the past in which the principal’s job was to see that the school ran smoothly and the principal was responsive to students, parents, and other stakeholders” (p. 43).

Data show that school leadership can have an effect on teacher and student performance, yet much of this is reliant upon positive and proactive strategies in management in providing support systems that will enable all to maintain high quality job performance. Middle management is not a profane term.

Yet in recent years it has become unfashionable.

We wonder how often district level administration and boards of education are educated on the daunting managerial tasks necessary for organizational success that are being demanded of building principals each day – those that have little to do with teaching evaluation or curricular leadership.  To use a medical metaphor, someone must prepare the operating rooms for surgery and keep appropriate socio-emotional supports for those getting treated and their loved ones.

We would like to suggest a redoubled focus on transparency in preparation for careers in K-12 school building leadership.  At minimum, every program should have a vibrant practicum or Internship where preservice principals are provided experiences in managing myriad demands as they are asked to lead.  This would certainly go a long way toward allowing future principals 20/20 perspectives regarding the expectations that will be demanded of them when they accept their first positions.

Applied experiences of graduate school learning in real-world, unpredictable situations would also demonstrate what is ever-so-special about the careers of K-12 principals as well.  After all, no other position in education today has the possibility of enhancing (and even “saving”) so many lives entrusted to its care. These opportunities to make a difference take place amidst challenges that are occurring for stakeholders in our states and local communities, where real lives are being both positively and negatively affected by the economy and world events. 

Take for instances the brutal reality that most districts are strapped for cash and are spending down their reserves because of the devastation of school funding in Illinois, as one example. Legislators are encouraging districts to do more with fewer resources.  In the midst of all this, principals must serve as champions of “Can DO!” while fostering willingness in others to help one’s neighbors, friends, and colleagues, as a bright future is oftentimes out of our reach individually, yet not so collectively.

Just consider how difficult it is today for principals to implement some the newer mandates that are taking substantial amounts of time implementing include transitioning to the Common Core State Standards or implementing revised performance evaluation systems.  Superhuman leadership is what today’s principalship is all about, including helping those as one example, who are threatened by the direction K-12 education is heading.  It’s not what many signed-up for 20 years ago.  In this, a strong rapport with faculty and staff is critical, as for buy-in to occur, all must trust that the principal is a caretaker.

Yes, the principalship is interpersonal; however, is simultaneously technical and pedagogical.  For newbies, it is certainly “educational.” 

One bit of advice we would be remiss if we did not mention to those considering a K-12 building principal’s career is that at all times, one’s professional position will be intimately political. This requires a new way of thinking, in that in order to implement needed changes, one may need to first become an armchair political scientist.  Possibly a park bench’s anthropologist as well, of school culture, that is.

All too often, leaders who encounter the most resistance to change fail to step back, look, ponder, and beyond this … to “think,” and thus, become more concerned with how events affect them personally, as opposed to the naturally expected influences of politics and culture. Without a more panoramic perspective, principals can quickly lose any social capital they may have amassed if change through initiative isn’t accompanied by interpersonal resilience, political tact, and with-it-ness.

With-it-ness is the ability to see oneself as others are seeing.

These three qualities of resilience, tact, and with-it-ness involve FIRST taking care of ourselves. Although our hardwiring is to care-take for others and even though we are responsible for all that goes wrong under our watch, we must control the manner in which we deal with the stresses that arise throughout a school year and foster a certain degree of resilience for the baggage we’re most certain to accrue, personally.

Living a healthy life outside of school – the life of a husband, wife, partner, friend, dad, or mom – is part of the pre-service education we must share with transparency and without apology.  Otherwise, we haven’t provided the visualization necessary that will allow in graduating principals, lasting success.

References

Chappelear, T. C., & Price, T. (2012). Teachers’ perceptions of high school principal’s monitoring of student progress and the relationship to student achievement. NCPEA Publications, 1(6), 1-16.

Pepper, K. (2012). Effective principals skillfully balance leadership styles to facilitate student success: A focus for the reauthorization of ESEA. Planning and Changing, 41(1/2), 42-56.

_______________________________________________________ 

Adam Bussard and Ryan Donlan are incredibly excited about the quality of preservice principal candidates selecting pathways to building leadership on behalf of schools and communities across the Midwest and America.  If you would like to have additional conversations with them, please consider reaching-out at bussardprin@gmail.com and ryan.donlan@indstate.edu.

In Conflict Over Collaboration?

Originally Run February 10, 2014 -- Back Again By Request ...

In Conflict Over Collaboration?

A Friendly Exchange between:

Dr. Ryan Donlan

Assistant Professor

Department of Educational Leadership

Bayh College of Education

Indiana State University

&

Dr. Steve Gruenert

Associate Professor & Department Chairperson

Department of Educational Leadership

Bayh College of Education

Indiana State University

At times, it is interesting to wander the hallways of University Hall in the Bayh College of Education at Indiana State University to hear folks talk -- especially faculty members, as they share perspectives on K-12 education.

One might hear a debate over the merits and “realness” of on-line learning experiences.  Another might hear how quickly (or not) a school can change its organizational culture. 

One overheard conversation recently occurred between Assistant Professor Ryan Donlan and his boss, Department Chair Steve Gruenert, regarding the notion of “Collaboration in K-12 Education.”  Dr. Donlan ascribes to the perspective of “I’m OK; You’re OK,” as he envisions human relationships.  Dr. Gruenert, at times begs to differ. 

Let’s listen in on part of their conversation, as transcribed this week for the Leadershop.

Ryan - You know, Steve, collaboration in K-12 schools is sorely in need of an upgrade.  We continue to run schools in an egg-crate design, with isolated workspaces reminiscent of a manufacturing era where everyone had an isolated job to do.  Purportedly, this benefits children, but I just don’t think so anymore.  We need more collaboration in K-12 schools today.

Steve -- Collaboration is simply a few lazy people sucking the life out of those who have the personal ethic to get the job done. Too often people enjoy having meetings just for the sake of meeting. Thus, there is no real motivation to solve the problem, as we will no longer have a reason to meet. However, in emergency situations the notion of coming together to help others is not the point I argue against. Those ad hoc moments can save lives and build friendships. What we discuss here is the notion of telling teachers they have to meet on a regular basis in hopes that something synergistic drops on the floor.

Ryan -- I agree that K-12 has its share of orchestrated get-togethers, yet what’s the harm?  Collaboration is natural to the human condition.  We’re hardwired for it.  In fact if you think about it, since the time of hunter-gathers, humans were at a serious disadvantage individually compared to other forms of life in how they would survive.  In order to obtain food, they needed to band together.  In order to protect themselves, they needed to do the same.  We formed compacts for shelter, communal safety, and other basic necessities so that we could survive as a species.  Even in later millennia, collaboration was needed in guaranteeing the foundational aspects of our lives, such as food production, electricity generation, clean water, and the development of medicines.  Human beings cannot survive in isolation.  They are hardwired for collaboration.

Yet beyond the notion of survival, collaboration fulfills a basic human need in the majority of all of us.  Most have a social orientation through which we live our lives.  We depend upon others keep us energized.  More than ever, we are connected. Why should we approach the world of school any differently than that of the outside?  School is simply a microcosm of the society in which we live.

Steve – Collaboration is an unnatural act. The whole notion of having to convince educators to do it suggests that it may not be best practice. There exist many books and rich consultants who make a living going door to door selling Professional Learning Communities as the solution. Educators have learned to trust their intuition as each new innovation imposes a new paradigm into the real world of teaching. If it really worked, we’d be doing it already; we would not need evangelism.

Ryan -- I do agree, Steve, that we spend too much time selling what we should be doing, but aren’t the organizational structures we have imposed upon ourselves the real enemies here? We’re not talking with each other because we can’t see each other when the kids are in session. We establish working hours that end, shortly after the kids go home.  It doesn’t make anything “unnatural” … rather, it simply makes things unworkable. 

Let me share another benefit of collaboration, as I see it?

We are now in a world where work can be taken to worker.  Our children must function in a competitive, global marketplace.   In order to demonstrate the necessary skills to obtain personally meaningful lives, they will need to be able to work together.  Yet, while we may expect this of them in schools, are we modeling?  After all, vicarious learning experiences are oftentimes touted, anecdotally, as meaningful. 

How can we expect students to understand what it takes to work with others if we only talk the talk, and not walk the walk?  As any effective teacher shares, if we are able to demonstrate what we are expecting students to do, they will find relevance.  Collaboration provides us this opportunity for modeling, while we are working as K-12 professionals to make decisions, address challenges, and deliver the highest quality education with the best use of tax dollars.  Collaboration, in full view of our most precious resource, makes better learning possible.

Steve -- Which suggests we should get rid of individual grades for students and create “team grading” policies; everyone loves those small-group activities in school. How will we know the needs of an individual when all the data is group level? Do we create IEPs for small groups, or for individuals? It seems the success of distance education – providing learning experiences without the benefit of the group in person – can show how teaching and learning can happen in asynchronous isolation.

In the real world, it is every person for him-or-herself. Your diagnosis from the doctor will be about you, and only you. We pay individual taxes because we are individuals. To force a group mentality on those of us who are successfully independent is nothing short of socialism. And I imagine that St. Peter will not look for groups to get into heaven, each name will be listed separately.

Life is not a team sport. However, if we pay attention to the times when a group does collaborate; terms like Groupthink (individuals surrender their own beliefs to the group, thinking it will be a more efficient way to do business), and Risky Shift (when positioned in a group, individuals will take greater risks hoping the anonymity saves them from blame) enter the mind. Cults and lynch mobs are the most efficient forms of collaboration. When has the term “Union Mentality” ever been a compliment?

Ryan – Then let me try this one on you for size.  I don’t think one can argue that collaboration results in better decision making.  After all, two heads are better than one … three even better.  Because of the various ways that each of us can approach the problems we face, collaboration allows us to capitalize on everyone’s “best” approach, selecting those that enhance decision-making.  Of course, this takes deft leadership to facilitate, but I think it’s safe in assuming that we at ISU work with those who can arguably be defined as “the best.” 

I don’t really see, Steve, how any perceived downsides to collaboration can offset the bottom line:  Better decisions are made.

Steve -- Think so? Imagine the following scenario:

Let’s take the following 26 hypothetical faculty or staff members with their I.Q.’s listed:

A (110), B (112), C (107), D (121), E (119), F (111), G (105), H (117), I (128), J (108), K (110), L (112), M (107), N (121), O (119), P (111), Q (105), R (117), S (128), T (108), U (110), V (102), W (137), X (125), Y (109), and Z (117). 

With a quick calculation, we get a mean of around 114, a high I.Q. of 137, and a low I.Q. of 102.  That said, we’re left with a question: “What is the ‘I.Q.’ of the group? How can we not say it is closer to the mean than the highest?

Collaboration can make half of us dumber.

Regardless of how the group works, the purpose of collaboration is to let each individual participate and feel as though he or she has made a contribution.  Thus, the lowest I.Q. is given the same space as the highest. If we think about cults or lynch mobs, it is rarely the decision of the smartest person in the group to carry on. This coming together compromises the fidelity of the group’s capacity to let the best lead the way. This consensus creates a weak link in a chain that was never needed.

The highest I.Q. is usually squelched by a charismatic, egocentric prima donna - a forceful personality that has emerged as a leader, simply because we decided to collaborate.

The best leaders are never the smartest people in the group. But they know who is, and will find a way to get that person’s untainted opinion – usually in the parking lot after everyone else has gone home.

______________________________________________________

Dr. Ryan Donlan and Dr. Steve Gruenert are not finished with their conversation and may be seen caucusing with doctoral students on any given Wednesday on campus or during other evenings while on the road.  If you would like to weigh-in on their thoughts, or better yet, give some Twitter love to whomever you agree with here, please feel free to do so.  We don’t believe these guys are going to come together any time soon without your help.