First, let me explain the change of name from VP to AP that you might have noticed in the title of this post (and yes, this is important): the rational for the change is due to the fact that the Principal that I am working with right now is temporary and not permanent. In fact, I am on my own for most of the month of October. This forces me to take on the full Principal role when he is not around (thus, being an Assistant seemed a better name to suit the position).
I have enjoyed it so far, to be honest. Let me thus share two things I have learned:
- Organizational Skills are Key - Thank the Lord for technology and Google Calendars (and Docs, and Tasks Lists etc.). My first word of advice to anyone doing this job is to share calendars and documents with people who need them, write down tasks in an area that you can always see them (I have placed a large whiteboard in my office that I write tasks down on, brainstorm on, write myself notes on, etc.), and finally answer emails immediately and take care of them without putting them off for any period of time; I find that if I wait on answering them, they disappear off my radar and I can very easily forget them and the topic they pertained to (this is a great recipe for disaster and missed important decisions and will also reflect badly on the corporation and your own professionalism).
- Be Flexible and Open - This might seem a bit simple in its initial view, but there is much more to it than simply changing your day to accommodate things as they come up; this is not what I am talking about. I am talking about leadership style. I have realized that I am most at home if I am a Transformational Leader (Liethwood, 1990) and not an Instructional or even Transactional leader. However, I realize that each one has its benefits and purposes and that to be a good leader I must figure out which one I need to be at which time. Thus, I will take some time to focus on this next.
Leadership Styles
A quick recap of the leadership styles is as follows: Instructional Leadership deals with managing curriculum and instruction. This is in my mind more of the classic Principal role with the following characteristics: top down approach, strong minded leadership, and charisma. Transactional Leadership is based more on dealing with the success of the company as an entity unto itself. The characteristics of this style of leadership is supervision, organization, and group performance with a rewards or punishment component. Transformational Leadership is based on vision and change. The characteristics of this style of leadership is inspiration, worker self motivation, and long term vision setting.Yes, there are probably more sub-styles of the above three (and the Laissez-Faire style in my eyes is not an actual leadership style) but I feel that these three do cover the majority of leadership styles. I have learned that each style has its place and time, and that a good leader needs to know which one to use when. I also feel that most leaders will probably have a dominant style; mine tends to sit at the Transformational level.
On a day to day basis, I have also found that it is important for me to look at problems as nothing more than that: problems that can be solved if a correct solution is found. I tend to have a bit of a thin skin at times (something that is not necessarily good for a leader I am told); to counteract this, I wear a jacket. My jacket is simply a work jacket: it is tough and reflects debris. The jacket is a mindset: problems occur and so I work at finding the solution to best fix the problem. After work, I take the jacket off and go home. My background as a computer technician and network administrator helps me in this situation: I feel there is a logical solution to any problem and that all that needs to be done is to listen to the problem and all of the facets connected to it, then to brainstorm solutions that might fit, and then cooperatively create a plan to fix the problem. As well, once a solution is put in place, one must go back to make sure that the problem is actually solved and did not create other problems. In leadership, this looks as follows: be open to allowing people to talk, vent, and give their opinions; go to all parties involved and get the information needed; keep the communication lines open between them and share ideas; get feedback for those ideas from the parties involved; choose a plan that best fits and that everyone involved in has had input into; and finally allow for reassessing of the solution from all parties involved.
This has worked so far. Have all problems been resolved so far? Not necessarily, but the problems are not being put on the back-burners and I feel confident solutions will be found.
Specifics
Connected to what I have shared above, I also want to share a few specific things, day to day, that I am finding in my job. For this month's post, I want to focus on international students and how best to fit them into a school body. The answer is that I don't know yet (in case you thought I was going to post some fix-all silver bullet here). However, here is what I feel is needed and what I am planning to do.
I believe that having an international student body in a K-12 school is not only important but vital in our day and age. We live in a world that might not geographically have gotten smaller, but is communication-ally smaller. A majority of jobs deal with oversee transactions, Canada itself has numerous ethnic groupings and influences, language barriers are much easier to deal with than before (thank you Google Translate), and we can Skype or Hangout with people from almost anywhere in the world we like. Our students need to learn how this is changing the world and how best to deal with it. Therefore, it is imperative in my eyes that we have international students in our schools.
But the best integration of that is the question. For now, I have discovered that a screening process is vital: we must know these students before they come to our schools. That probably means having a liaison who is familiar with their culture (and maybe even fluent in their language) who goes and meet the families in their own communities, having entrance guidelines and performance levels in place that those students must meet (language aptitude tests, for example) before they are accepted into our schools, and having specific support in place once they arrive to meet their needs. Right now, we have skeletons of these in place in my school, but nothing extensive enough to see overall success. I have therefore decided to go on the hunt to find a place where this is being done well; my choice right now is our local University. I am planning to meet with the international students coordinator next week hopefully at our University, tell them what we have, ask for some ideas and support, and make some useful connections.
I have learned this year that if this is not done right our teachers suffer; a slapped-together international student body that is added to our schools simply adds another component to our classrooms that is similar to adding a group of special needs students (but without the aids); the teachers attention is pulled in the direction of the internationals and therefore takes away from teaching the rest of the students. Yes, teaching is different than it was before and teachers must be flexible and adjust styles to their classrooms, but perhaps there is only so far a teacher will be able to bend and change before a breaking point occurs. This is a specific point that I think needs to be addressed: if students are here to graduate, do teachers simply view them as equal to other students and assess them at the same level? How much do we need to adjust? I have not found many international students who can communicate at a level high enough for the teacher to not notice that they are international (for example, are these students asked to write an English 12 essay with the same criteria as other English 12 students: same amount, same grammar, same word usage, etc.?). Thus, do we adapt our curriculum for them? How much is enough? Or, do we keep the standard high and give aid to them to help them to reach that level? Is it possible to do that and how could this be done effectively and not become a large financial burden on our school?
This has been September. I look forward to the next month and the challenges and solutions to come.
