Keys To Successful 21st Century Educational Leadership

Chapter 15, ISLLC Standards 1-6 For your Future and Beyond

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6 Focus Action Keys

1. Educational Facilitation Focus
Facilitate the development of a cohesive learning group which values diversity and explores conflict constructively

2. Learner Focus
Understand the context in which leadership is situated the learners needs, desires, and strengths and the issues being addressed
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6 Focus Action Keys

3. Educational Leadership Focus
Group-centered approach to leadership development

4. Issue/Action Focus
learning in action is encouraging on-going reflection or collective self-examination

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6 Focus Action Keys

5. Non-Prescriptive Educational Leadership Focus
Content of educational leadership efforts will be determined with and by participants

6. Process as Content Focus

Facilitation, community building, teamwork, group planning and decision making, organizational development, conflict management, and group reflection
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Visioning Leadership Successful 21st century educational leaders will need to inspire those they lead by establishing, implementing and assessing an attractive, worthwhile, achievable vision of the future.
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Keys for Aspiring & Current Educational Leaders

Seeing Things Differently
Collect and arrange data to help create a vision

Doing Things Differently

Synergy flows when educational leaders and their followers work together to build and implement a vision

Transcending Diversity
Transcend across race, gender, creed, nationality, handicap or disability
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Keys for Aspiring & Current Educational Leaders

Answering a Higher Calling
Be the one who is able to communicate visions that offer a goal, get a group to work together, and contribute your best toward the achievement of that vision

Ceasing Opportunities
The force of a vision may be increased by crisis
View crisis as a resource for a group, organization, or leader
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Keys for Aspiring & Current Educational Leaders

Accepting Reality
Understand the socially constructed reality of the staff in order to understand how a particular vision might affect others

Valuing the Past, But Knowing When to Leave It

Vision based on improvements, enhancements, and a more desirable future

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Keys for Aspiring & Current Educational Leaders

Maximizing Direction
Enhance the meaning of group life and activities

Building a Brighter Tomorrow

Move the group forward toward a particular vision in spite of challenges and opposition

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Successful Visioning
Conflict Resolution articulated by the leader will need to correspond to that leaders qualities, style and capabilities, for if it does not, preferred accomplishments will be jeopardized Be careful in being biased toward attending to the interests of followers
Such leaders will tend to de-emphasize visioning, opting for close relationships with followers
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3 Elements of Leadership

1. The Leaders 2. The Followers 3. The Environment

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Successful Visioning
The key for 21st century visioning educational leaders to hold is whether this conflict is life giving or life disabling. Inter-group cohesion should not be so great as to stifle healthy or constructive disagreements among groups nor hinder accomplishments so high level goals.

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Successful Visioning
The overall performance of organizations is likely to be enhanced when visioning educational leaders coordinate the performance goals of groups in such a manner that one group is not accomplishing its goals at the expense of another without concern for another

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Stress Keys for Successful 21st Century Educational Leadership

1. Long Hours
54-80 hours each week, including evenings and weekends

2. Too Much on Your Plate

Constantly putting out fires and mending fences

3. Government Mandates and Accountability

New laws and requirements at the state and federal level are being passed in record number without adequate funding provided

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Stress Keys for Successful 21st Century Educational Leadership

4. Critical Issues of Society Brought to School
School safety, substance abuse, teen pregnancy, teen suicide, learning difficulties, etc.

5. Surpassing Achievement Standards

Insufficient financial support for program and skills development and a shortage of qualified curriculum directors and instructional specialists

6. Special Education Requirements

IDEA requirements, Section 504 accommodations, and other legislative mandates
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Stress Keys for Successful 21st Century Educational Leadership

7. School Funding Issues 8. Little Financial Incentive
A new assistant principal barely makes 5% more than that of an experience teacher

9. Inability to Fire Incompetent Teachers 10. Contractual Agreements

Constraints in employee contracts often preclude educational leaders from making rapid change and making school improvements more expeditiously
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Keys to Lasting Educational Leadership Reforms

Education is a process that encourages continual progress through the improvement of ones abilities, the expression of ones interests, and the growth of ones character Successful schools are a place where students, teachers, administrators, and others take pride and joy in their work Continuous improvement of teachers and students working together
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Keys to Lasting Educational Leadership Reforms

Continuous improvement through greater empowerment of teacher-student teams Reliance on tests as the major means of assessment of student production will be inherently wasteful, non-reliable, and not authentic Relationships built in schools that are established on trust and collaboration between school and community
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Keys to Lasting Educational Leadership Reforms

Teachers are empowered to make continuous progress in the quality of their learning and other aspects of personal development, while they learn valuable lessons from temporary failures Institute programs of training for new staff members unfamiliar with the specific culture and expectations of the school
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Keys to Lasting Educational Leadership Reforms

Work with teachers, parents, students, and members of the community as coaches and mentors so that students accomplishments will be maximized Create a more integrated opportunity for learning and discovery Collectively arrive at slogans and school themes to improve working together
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Keys to Lasting Educational Leadership Reforms

Assignments and tests that focus attention on numerical or letter grades and production completion will not fully reflect the quality of student progress and performance Teachers and students will want to do their best and feel pride in it Enrich education by e3xploring ideas and interests beyond the boundaries of professional and personal worlds
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Successful Educational Leaders Hold the Key to Unlock a Vision

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