Running head: CURRICULUM SUPERVISION
Platform Plank V: Role of the Principal: Evaluative Mode
Theme VI: Curriculum Supervision
Jeffrey B. Romanczuk
Sevier County School System
“Communication is a minefield.” - Jeff
Romanczuk
Abstract
Although
I do address principal role specifics in several places, I mainly use the more
general “educational leader” since I personally have no intention or desire to
ever be a principal. This plank starts
with an explanation of my knowledge, passion, communication essentials before
venturing into specific answers to these questions:
How
does the educational leader influence the purpose of education?
What
role to values play in educational leadership?
What
is my leadership style and how does it relate to how I believe school leaders
should function?
How
do we know when an educational leader is effective?
What
does the leader’s role have to do with organizational theory and organizational
change?
I close with a discussion of the leadership metaphors
identified with certain authors and one I coined: subtle leadership.
What are some of the key roles of an
educational leader?
The
three keys for me: knowledge, passion,
and communication.
Knowledge
The leader has to actually contribute something that no
one else in the group can or will. Fullan (2001) makes a point common to the
data-information-knowledge-wisdom discussion:
“Information is machines. Knowledge is people,” (p. 78). Since knowledge
itself isn’t always tangible, experience is often an acceptable substitute.
Those who work for you have to know what jobs you’ve been through to get where
you are now and (more importantly) that you understand their work and
appreciate what is hard about it. With
the principal/teacher dynamic, Darling-Hammond’s advice in her article on teacher training (as cited
in Ornstein, Behar-Horenstein, & Pajak, 2003), is that administrators
should support teacher learning that supports student learning, being careful
to balance subject matter knowledge with pedagogical expertise.
Passion
No
matter what the leader knows, he or she won’t be able to incite or inspire
others to action without a clear and consistent passion for the work ahead.
Passion has to be the foundation for the power and responsibility inherent in
any leadership role. Passion isn’t power, of course, but the second half of the
following quote is hinting at passion as much as power. “Power is the ability
to get things done. . .the latent ability to influence people” (Allen &
Porter, as cited in Shafritz & Ott, 2001, p. 299).
Passion in particular helps a principal avoid
feeling like he or she is caught in the middle of what the students and their parents
need and want and what the teachers and the central office need and want. Max De Pree
(1989), in Leadership is an Art, says
that the leader defines reality. Bennis (as cited in Drath & Palus, 1994)
makes a similar point that a leader creates meaning through vision and trust.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1929) held that we all have a skill to offer, a chance to
lead, and obligation to each other to do so (“be something of worth and value,”
p. 709). His point is twofold:
contribute to society in your own way and trust that God has a plan for
you. Find it and follow it. Emerson is
either describing passion, or I’m mistaking passion for patience, also a useful
virtue (but not one of my top three).
Communication
My
minefield quote above stems from an extremely difficult time in my leadership
journey. As Training Project Manager for Oak Ridge Institute for Science and
Education’s (ORISE’s) Albuquerque office, I was geographically separated from
my leadership support base (my boss and the HR department back in Oak Ridge). I
had only my ORISE support staff and the seven of us were co-located with our
Department of Energy clients. The ORISE staff in New Mexico had come to view
themselves as working directly for their DOE managers and saw the ORISE manager
role as unnecessary (though they never overtly said so). It was an impossible
position to be in and I was widely viewed as ineffective and the wrong person
for the job. Never mind that any mortal would have been the wrong one for the
job. As a communicator I was highly ineffective because most of what I said was
viewed with suspicion and most of what I wrote was overanalyzed for meanings
beyond my intent. I came to feel like I had to start watching everything I said
and wrote. Although I saw what I needed to change, it would have taken more
time and personnel changes than ORISE or DOE were willing to give it for me to
solve the problems.
I
fancy myself a “subtle” leader, Omar Bradley instead of George Patton. The main
trouble for the subtle leader, though, is communicating regularly and clearly.
The subtle leader knows “leadership is a relationship” (Kouzes & Posner,
2002, p. 20). Leadership development is not individual-, but community-based
and participative (Drath & Palus, 1994). Horowitz (1997) notes that a successful
leader’s primary ability is communicating well. As with any good leader, the
subtle leader uses communication to motivate, but he also talks less and favors
listening and analyzing more than most leaders do. As Drath and Palus (1994)
pose it, the leader’s quandary should not be so much “How can I take charge. .
.? How can I influence these people”
(p. 1) as it should be, “What is the most effective process of leadership for
this group [and] [h]ow can I. . .participate productively in this process of
leadership?” (p. 2). Subtle leaders are more inclined than the showman leaders
are to encourage, or at least not stifle, “contrary opinions” (De Pree, 1989,
p. 14).
Fullan
(2001) puts relationships right behind moral purpose in how vital both are to leaders.
No matter what the business is, it is done by people interacting. In his
chapter titled “Relationships, Relationships, Relationships,” Fullan decides to
do something because it isn’t done enough:
discuss “businesses as if they had souls and hearts” and “schools as if
they had minds” (p. 51). Part of his point in giving the San Diego district
students’ reading score progress is to show that the leaders currently in place
know what needs doing. Breaking through the inertia and bureaucracy to get it done
is what they often need help with.
Communication
tends to be the toughest hurdle on my leadership development steeplechase. I
don’t ever try to conceal the fact that my teaching experience doesn’t cover
twenty years (as it does for most teachers my age). However, I tend to get more
credit than I probably deserve in the special education realm for being the
parent of two children with classic autism. Another bad side of the special
education parent angle is that my passion for education tends not to extend to
general education. I am committed to preK to 12 education in general, but the
further my involvement strays from special education, the less passionate I am
about going down those roads. Bigger than my special education bias, though,
are the difficulties I have in communicating. I have always preferred writing
and project planning to talking and project execution. I’m a little better
about getting out of the office and seeing things through now than I was in my
Air Force days, but giving interpersonal interactions the attention they merit
remains a big effort for me.
How does the educational leader influence
the purpose of education (or vice versa)?
The
educational leader as mentor is one way to extend a lone professional’s
influence on the purposes of education and a way to fulfill an individual’s
obligation to the profession. Out of necessity, new teachers have been coming
to veterans of the classroom with issues and questions long before mentoring
put a formal structure on the process. Those new teachers who thrive become
mentors for the young teachers starting a few years later. Tillman’s article
(2000) highlights this mentoring relationship. Such mentoring is subtle
leadership because it is both voluntary and informally created from a structure
already in place. Designated mentoring has only given the informal process more
formality and the mentoring teacher an opportunity to demonstrate subtle
leadership. Even so, Tillman remarks that both sides enter the relationship
willingly and when it works best, it gradually shifts to a collegiality of
equals over the years.
The
change in attitude and social relationship (not just ability changes) indicated
here is not accidental. Sparks and
Loucks-Horsley (as
cited in Ornstein, Behar-Horenstein, & Pajak, 2003) define staff
development as improving job-related knowledge, skills, and attitudes. Showers and Joyce’s (as cited in Ornstein,
Behar-Horenstein, & Pajak) peer-coaching is similar to mentoring, only more
among “equals” and more judgment- and value-free. The bright side in this evolution in peer-coaching is that when
teachers have an in-building “coach,” they tend to pool resources and work on
new skills more so than they would through training alone.
What role do values play in educational leadership?
In
one of the Leadership class lectures last summer (2003) we were discussing what
any school’s common values tend to be. Individual worth and the right to learn
came up early. Respecting the dignity of the learner followed. The concept of
life-long learning and the belief that all students can learn rounded out the
discussion. In the “Modeling the Way” section of Leadership Challenge Kouzes and Posner (2002) opine that it is
important that the leader be cognizant of his own values prioritization because
a value is “an enduring belief” (Rokeach, as cited in Kouzes & Posner, p.
48). Values influence every aspect of our judgments, responses, and
commitments. They impact every decision big or small. More importantly, we tend
not to act on options that run counter to our values (Kouzes & Posner).
Fullan
(2001) puts forth the need for retaining a moral purpose as a way of grounding
how we behave as leaders. If we keep in mind that our point as educators is to
“make a difference in the lives of students” (p. 13), we can’t help but work
toward not only treating the students fairly, but dealing fairly with teachers
as well. Foster (1986) opens his chapter titled “Leadership” by observing that
in Educational Administration leadership involves “presentation of values and
images of the proper way” (p. 169). Harkening back to the higher purpose that
Emerson (1929 [1841]) wrote of, Handy (1998) bemoans society’s trend toward
appeasing the lesser hunger (for stuff) and ignoring the greater hunger (for a
meaningful life). Although it is more than a little disingenuous of me to claim
I want to be this kind of transformational leader when I’m not even an adequate
transactional leader (Owens, 2001), it astonishes me how often I am the one
trying to get people to distinguish what matters and lasts from what
doesn’t.
Heifetz
(1994) observes that leadership involves a moral code; managing doesn’t. Foster
(1986) makes the distinction that leadership is concerned with the critical
decisions whereas management concerns only the routine ones. Leadership is a
social contract, more value laden than value free, encompassing cultural
assumptions and the moral authority (rather than legitimate authority) to lead.
Heifetz offers as examples King, Gandhi, Sanger, and Havel. What is curious
about Havel’s case, though, is that his moral authority as a well-known poet
led to legitimate authority. Colby and Damon (1992) describe the moral
commitment of leadership as action based, teaching followers how to be by being
that way as a leader.
What is my particular leadership style and
how does it relate to how I believe school leaders should function?
I’m
an INTJ, meaning I work from an NT (intuitive thinker) pairing. NTs value competence most in themselves and
others and tend to be more visionary and less day-to-day focused in their
planning (Pajak interpreting the work of Jung, as cited in Ornstein, Behar-Horenstein, &
Pajak, 2003). But it isn’t true to say
NTs would rather play in the realm of ideas than that of reality. The NT I manifest is tempered by a religious
belief in servant leadership; I describe
it as “subtle leadership.” Even in
Albuquerque the DOE clients called me a “working” Project Manager. It wasn’t a
complete compliment or insult. ORISE may have needed a manager in place, but
the DOE Operations Office didn’t (or believed it didn’t, at least). So I became
just another worker bee, with my ability to quickly figure out and talk people
through software problems often saving my job from being a total loss.
I like Sergiovanni’s notion of
the principal as steward (as cited in Ornstein, Behar-Horenstein, & Pajak, 2003), but don’t
go as far as he does in seeing myself (now or ever) as a transformational
leader. He cites Mead’s work as
supportive of the idea that a small group can change the world (p. 283). As much as I admire Margaret Mead, this is a
tough sell for me, seeing how tough it is day in and day out just to try to
change myself.
Kuck
(1997) summarizes his servant-leadership article by saying that “an effective
leader quietly, consistently, lovingly works long hours behind the scenes to
make the school the best it can be” (p. 45). Although it feels counterintuitive
to think of the leader working behind
the scenes,
one of Kuck’s points is that the work no one witnesses
is what makes the visible tasks seem easy and effortless (to disinterested
observers, at least!). Kuck’s article is largely an exposition of how Bogue’s Enemies of Leadership (which I haven’t
read yet) dovetails with the tenants of servant leadership. The “working behind
the scenes” comment is rendered during Kuck’s discussion of Bogue’s call for a
“sensitive use of authority” (Kuck, p. 45). Such a use involves the leader’s
serving and inspiring rather than seeking to be served. A related trait of
subtle leaders that Bogue (as cited in Kuck) attributes to servant leaders is
curbing the ego. Another related trait of subtle leaders that is even more
useful and used is the capacity to absorb hostility without exacting revenge. The leader has to understand what those in
the organization are dealing with, but the opposite isn’t true. Simply put, people assume this is why you as
principal make more than anybody in the
building and they don’t care how busy you are.
When they want your attention, you can lose a lot of good will by
seeming distracted or giving them only divided attention.
Mintzberg (as cited in Owens, 2001) observes that
the pace of an administrative manager’s day is unrelenting, with much of the
work unplanned conferences and interactions.
Kuck’s (1997) push for the principal to do the behind the scenes work
supplies the planning for these unplanned meetings. Although it is the nonroutine assistance that teachers, parents,
and students notice, the Central Office staff take more notice if the routine
is disrupted. The trick is to satisfy
both without burning out.
Subtle
leaders also know when to look outside their group. Kouzes and Posner (2002)
acknowledge that fresh ideas are often external, so “outsight” can be as
important and insight (p. 192), though much more difficult to get at. Analysis
is usually internal. Covey (1990) admits as much in stating that his four
levels of principle-centered leadership—personal, interpersonal, managerial,
and organizational—are “practiced from the inside out” (p. 31). Although he doesn’t call it this, Burns (1978)
describes micromanagement when railing
against the “naked power wielding” (p. 19) that results in the
do-what-I-want-you-to-do-when-I-want-you-to-do-it mentality that denies the
followers’ part in the needs and goals being worked. In other words, power
wielding managers can treat people as things; leaders can’t. In a similar vein,
Mary Parker Follett (1996 [1926?]) notes that the “test of a foreman now is not
how good he is at bossing, but how little bossing he has to do” (p. 166).
How do we know when an educational leader
is effective in their position?
Unfortunately,
it is easier to tell when the school leadership is ineffective, but “effective”
is the better question. Norris, Barnett, Basom, and Yerkes (2002) emphasize
empowerment, quality learning, and thinking/knowledge acquisition over
standards based Educational Administration.
Glickman (as
cited in Ornstein, Behar-Horenstein, & Pajak, 2003) makes the point that
the premium put on diversity in educational approaches—indeed in education
itself—is warranted, but this diversity makes individual school accountability
tough to gauge. The Interstate School Leaders Licensure Consortium
tends to fret too much about isolated components of principalship and school
leadership and doesn’t worry enough about the problem of how much classroom to
workplace transfer is taking place in colleges’ educational administration
programs. According to Heifetz (1994),
the purpose of leadership is to help the community face its problems and live
up to its responsibilities, not propose a “follow me” vision (p. 14). In other
words, as Dr. Bogue (class lecture notes, June 2003) put it: asking the right questions is more important
for school leaders than supplying the answers.
What does the leader’s role have to do with
organizational theory and organizational change?
Kearns
(as cited in Darling-Hammond, 1997) makes the point that we need to
restructure, not merely tinker with educational reform. Piecemeal changes and
reforms that were more well-intentioned than thorough have gotten K-12
education to its present state. Fullan (2001) observes that change flares
emotions and leadership tempers them. A fast pace is both exhilarating and
agonizing, so the leader needs to keep those led focused. In Fullan’s chapter
on understanding change, I was almost fooled at first by his use of three
cookbook-type lists of how a leader should manage change. The third,
specifically (Hamel, 2000, as cited in Fullan) comes off as more than a little
militant and overly dominant (“Co-opt and neutralize”, “Win small, win early,
win often,” p. 33). I started to think, “Come on, now, Michael. Why are you so
widely cited?” Then Fullan finally
states that such advice is often contradictory and doesn’t help a leader know
what to actually do anyway. Those he cited reminded me of my Squadron Office
School days from the U. S. Air Force, where they told us (mostly new captains)
that we were there to learn how to “manage violence and control the air.” Fullan at least admits that change cannot be
managed, but that organizations can be led through it.
A
leader’s primary role is to help the organization not only adjust to change,
but embrace it (Creasey, 2002). This is problematic for subtle leaders because
most people tend to resist change and push back. An arrogant leader is at an
advantage here (in the short-term, anyway) because the subtle leader takes an
emotional beating in his push-pull battles as change agent. As Kuck (1997) puts
it, they more often look like “sorrowful servants” than “stately leaders” (p.
44). Alinsky (1971) reminds us that consistency isn’t a virtue in a changing
political landscape. In his essay “Self Reliance,” Emerson (1929) much earlier
[1841] made a similar observation that “a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin
of little minds” (p. ?).
Alinsky’s
reference to the changing political landscape calls to mind the role politics
play in work situations. I mean
politics in the broad sense (that is, “getting one’s needs met,” as we defined
it during our April 8, 2004 class discussion) and in the narrower, uppercase
“P” sense. Hirsch (1999) makes the
point that the education debate too often gets wrapped up in the liberal/conservative
political struggle. He agrees with
Gramsci’s (a 1930s “Communist intellectual” in Italy) belief that political
progressivism demands “educational conservatism” (p. 7). While I’m not as radical as Alinsky or as
progressive as Gramsci, I agree that conservative changes in education are more
likely to gain support and endure.
Gramsci was reacting to the “life relevance” curriculum put in place by
Mussolini’s education minister, opposing these “naturalistic approaches” that
were supplanting “hard work and the transmission of knowledge” (Hirsch, p.
7). Gramsci worried that this natural
curriculum was not tied to concrete facts, that being left to “flourish
naturally” would not help the poor as much as would working hard, gaining
knowledge, and understanding, then mastering
the “traditional culture” (p. 8).
Unlike the Education Minister, Gramsci was no “proponent of the new
ideas emanating from Teachers College” (Hirsch, p. 8). Along with Friere, Hirsch calls Gramsci one
of the “two most distinguished educational theorists of the political Left” (p.
8). Unfortunately for Gramsci, Minister
Gentile had the support of Mussolini, so Gramsci lodged many of his protests
from jail and Friere’s ideas began to influence liberals in educational
administration in the United States.
Gardner
(1990) defines leadership as the process of persuasion of one on a group (p. 1)
and cautions that power isn’t enough without “leadership gifts” (p. 2), one of
which is having the broad, long view rather than the specific, short look. Epstein supports taking the long view in
advocating for three-year-span home/school/community planning, for similar
though more practical reasons: such
long range planning helps all sides keep on
track (Epstein, as cited in Ornstein, Behar-Horenstein, & Pajak,
2003). With her emphasis on
home-school-community interaction, Epstein makes a strong case that teachers
who engage in parent bashing and parents who engage in teacher- or school
bashing are ignoring the overlapping spheres of influence they share as a whole
community in the students’ lives. An
example from my own life, as coach of a softball team for kids too mentally or
physically challenged to play “regular” little league: the kind of overlap Epstein is addressing
wasn’t clear to me until the league commissioner (in talking about one player
specifically) mentioned that he has seen the boy’s gross motor skills improve a
lot since he’s been playing. At the
time it only struck me as odd to hear an insurance salesman use the term “gross
motor skills.”
Showers
and Joyce (as cited
in Ornstein, Behar-Horenstein, & Pajak) advocate for teachers’ long-term
planning, too. They stress getting
teachers to apply the school’s goals to their own year and semester. I would suggest taking it down even more
levels, to their weekly and daily lesson planning.
Bogue
(2000) offers additional practical advice:
expect much of those in your charge. He describes these high
expectations as the power of the leader’s latent or expressed expectations, and
reminds us that we don’t do a person any good by expecting little of them. A point Guskey (as cited in Ornstein,
Behar-Horenstein, & Pajak, 2003) makes that has rung true in my teacher and
parent training needs analysis work in Sevier County is that if professional
development is going to facilitate change, it has to be teacher specific and
focus on the day to day activities at the classroom level. Guskey’s point is that change is both
organizational and individual, so he advises the leader to think big, start
small, and work the staff in teams. From my own perspective, I have to begrudgingly agree with
Guskey. They rarely like it, but people can and often do work through change.
Discussion of my leadership metaphor:
Communication
is everything from a minefield to a lifeline for leaders. Quiet leaders
(Badaracco, 2002) see leadership as complex, subtle, fragile. They are
realists, not pessimists, optimists, or cynics. This doesn’t contradict Bogue’s
(2000) advice to take people as they ought to be, not as they are. Especially
from the special education perspective in which observable measurable gains
often come even slower than they do in general education, taking the students
from where they are to where they ought to be requires a leadership that mixes
coaching and compassion, patience and persistence.
Kouzes
and Posner (2002) believe all of us
can and do lead and, more importantly, can learn to do so better. This is true for flashy, extroverted leaders
and even for quiet, subtle leaders.
Kouzes and Posner describe this leadership challenge as “how traditional
systems of rewards and punishments, control and scrutiny, give way to
innovation, individual character, and the courage of convictions” (p. xxiii).
They see the leader’s role as one of challenging the processes: always
promoting innovation, change, and teamwork.
Summary
In
trying to keep an information flow and support balance, and based on my own
commitment to special education and servant leadership, I have little problem
with driving all around the county trying to give the teachers the support they
need when and where they need it. This subtle leadership works for me now as
special education administrative support person, but I’m not sure how well
servant leadership will go over for me as a special education director or (God
forbid) principal. In these leadership positions, the pressures from all sides
(parents, students, teachers, and the central office), tend to eat up any
leader who thinks of himself as a servant first. Servant leadership also makes
being the group’s change mentor a tough sell, especially for someone who isn’t
half the Great Communicator that the Gipper was.
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