I just completed a graduate class in Effective Leadership. Having never studied anything like this in the past, I really didn’t know what to expect. I was excited to realize that the readings were completely fascinating to me and immediately applicable. I was presented with ideas that had me enthusiastically nodding my head, while others didn’t seem to ring true. Throughout the eight weeks, I began to shape a personal philosophy of leadership that will inform my decisions in the months and years to come.
While writing and sharing with those in my cohort, I found myself coming back again and again to Peter Senge’s idea of a “learning organization”. This is a place where “. . .people continually expand their capacity to create the results they truly desire, where new and expansive patterns of thinking are nurtured, where the collective aspiration is set free, and people are continually learning how to learn together (1990). This is a powerful vision that encompasses all we should be about as educators. We are faced with demanding expectations from our constituencies and need to prepare students for a challenging future. At no other time has there been a greater need for educators to reinvent themselves. As John Dewey said, “If we teach our children as we did yesterday, we rob them of the future.” To stay relevant and effective, we must see ourselves as learners; a connected community of learners, whose collaboration and common purpose make us much more powerful than we can be on our own. A learning organization celebrates ingenuity- doing things differently than they’ve ever been done. It encourages authentic exchanges where a teacher willingly admits gaps in knowledge, confident that a colleague will eagerly help to fill them in. This is a place where ideas aren’t owned and protected, but shared and collected.
This past year I saw my school begin a journey towards becoming this type of organization. A group of us were chosen to experience a job-embedded, year long, professional development experience through Powerful Learning Practice, or PLP. Using social networking tools like Twitter, Diigo, Nings, and wikis, we connected with education professionals from around the world. Sharing best practices, reading current educational theory and being exposed to new technologies caused enormous professional growth within our group. The excitement was not to be contained! Within several months, all three divisions of the school were taking part in professional development on a regular basis that was designed and implemented by teachers. Without paying one outside presenter, our teachers experienced a tremendous year of learning. Learning to learn with and from each other is not going to happen overnight. We have a lot of work to do in translating our knowledge to the classroom. We have paradigms shifting and teachers feeling unsure of the next step. But we are learners who will never claim to have arrived. What a powerful message to live for our students.
So here’s the rub: how do we assess success in this messy new landscape? It seems preposterous that we would teach students skills of collaboration, communication, critical thinking and creativity and then measure achievement with a “fill-in-the-bubble” test. Throughout this class, however, I was asked to look at such data in regards to developing school vision and to evaluate the success of programs. There were very few members of my cohort who had anything good to say about state testing programs, and yet we didn’t question using the test results in this way. I understand that this is reality in American public education right now. I don’t understand, however, admitting defeat by leaving these methods unquestioned. A group of intelligent, passionate professionals should participate in rigorous discourse regarding these issues. Kenneth Leithwood’s essay, “Transformational School Leadership in a Transactional Policy World”, offered compelling reasons to fight the current system of measuring school success. He poses that effective leadership practices are being abandoned in order to answer the demands of these transactional policies. Administrators must remember what makes them good leaders. They have to commit to leading by example and from an authentic sense of self. They have to resist the path of rewards and consequences and continue to lead their faculty under a shared vision regarding teaching and learning. Policy should not preempt passion.
Moving forward I have much to learn about how to navigate the political side of administration. I will certainly have moments where I am desperate to rewind time and make a different decision. I will, however, be moving forward armed with a leadership philosophy grounded in authenticity, a desire to learn and the realization that I am surrounded by those who can teach me.
