So I have had this blog for quite awhile but being busy it has not been updated for quite some time.
But the other day I had a talk with one of my colleagues here at YIS, Kim Cofino. Kim has been bugging me for some time to be more active on the blogging scene. I know it sounds lame, but I am really busy as a head of school and if I am to add anything new in my schedule, it probably means I need to stop doing something else. In other words, it is a question of priorities.
Our conversation ended with Kim making a great point that really this was about connecting and learning from others. For me, blogging has no value in and of itself. But connecting with others and learning are things I like to do anyway. So….
With this in mind, I had an idea. I am going to pose two questions and I am going to ask to Kim to send this around through her network. And I would hasten to add, this isn’t something that is just theoretical, it is something I am grappling with myself. I have also been talking to a lot people here about it these questions: everyone from the board chair, to the leadership team to my teaching colleagues.
Here is the question(s): what is the role of a Head of School in a modern international school? More specifically how, if at all, is this different from 20 years ago?
And also it might help me if you could think broadly along three different categories in your response: dispositions, activities and skills.
We all know that schools have and are changing but I don’t see much of discussion really focused upon the role of head of school. (Keep in mind too, a head of school at an international school tends to be quite a different role than that of a principal/superintendent in government school.)
My challenge to Kim is to send this blog post (and the question) out to her network and see what answers are generated as a result. If you could respond, I would be sincerely appreciative.
I look forward to learning from you.
92 comments ↓
Hi James,
You asked about Dispositions, Activities and Skills. It seems to me it’s all about the same thing. Being a learner:
– Take a learner’s stance in all you do (this often allows you to sidestep conflict and focus on the core issues at stake in difficult conversations).
- Do the things a learner does; let others see you doing that.
- Skillful leaders are always learning and share what and how they’ve learned with other people.
I don’t teach in an international school but I know the international school system can be very competitive.
In my current job it came out in the interview process that I would bring with me a network of thousands of educators from across the globe. I regularly reach out to other people I’m connected with online (as recently as 3 hours ago) to help people with whom I’m working. Other candidates for my position didn’t bring that to the table in quite the same way. Hiring me was like hiring ~3000 people. Hiring the other fella was like hiring the other fella. There’s nothing special about me vis a vis the other fella … except I was deliberate about fostering my professional growth through my online connections. That’s why hiring me isn’t just hiring me. The other fella could’ve done the same; he didn’t.
How would these ideas factor into your thinking when hiring a new employee? What does that suggest about your own professional growth? Just wondering.
Cheers!
Dear Mr. Macdonald,
Welcome to blogging! Now you are a blogger! That was no big deal, right?
Blogging IS no big deal. It is just writing, but on the Web. Sometimes there is even an audience for what you write. I suspect that you will never receive as many comments as for this post and you may not even get as far as mine. Regardless, I took my assignment from your colleague Ms. Cofino seriously.
Blogging (and its social media cousins) are useful if you have a confessional nature and feel like sharing your thoughts with the world or if you need to have a question answered. It may also serve a utilitarian function in easily communicating with your school community. Blogging, like nearly every other school use of the Web, is essentially a literacy activity. One challenge for school leaders is finding ways to use computers to enhance the rest of what it means to be educated.
For example, Is “math” taught in a Pre-Gutenberg fashion at your school or has computation and the social sciences’ need for number transformed kids’ experience as it has radically reinvented real mathematics?
Regrettably, much of what is done in schools in the name of edtech or ICT is really just a form of “computer appreciation” The true power of the computer lies in its power as a computational instrument for constructing knowledge, the concretizing of formal ideas and the creation of artifacts in intellectual domains that would otherwise be inaccessible to children. This ability to use the computer to amplify human potential is only possible with awareness and teachers’ ongoing development of expertise. Leadership is critical for setting high expectations, asking “so what?” questions, supporting continuous growth of teachers and creating an atmosphere where the technology functions in the ways children expect – free of counter-productive, expensive and hysterical IT practices.
Leaders in the digital age need to redefine “new” and “progress.” New isn’t about what you buy as much as what your students DO. Progress isn’t measured by bandwidth, but when classrooms are less mind-numbing, soul-killing and time-wasting. Leaders need to recognize that young people have a remarkable capacity for intensity and find ways to make school more intense, without making it more chaotic.
So, blogging at least familiarizes yourself with an activity required of students. That’s the first step towards making sound educational decisions. Too many school leaders mandate that children do things that they themselves would never do or may never have even attempted. That isn’t leadership. Leaders also recognize that we stand on the shoulders of giants and that computing offers yet another attempt to realize the ideas of Dewey, Papert, Malaguzzi and other progressive educators.
Now, on to the actual nature of your questions…
The greatest challenge facing school leaders is to abandon the notions that 1) education is based on scarcity and 2) learning is the direct causal result of having been taught.
In the 21st Century, there is no reason for school to be concerned with creating winners and losers. Sorting, ranking, grading, labeling and classifying of students are destructive artifacts of a bygone era when access to education was scarce and limited to a privileged few. This is no longer the case. I won’t go into proving the plethora of examples to support this argument. I suspect you can find them yourself.
School in itself is a technology with benefits and consequences – affordances and constraints that dictate the experience of its inhabitants. In the future, your school will NOT have the monopoly on children’s time you currently hold. The challenge is to answer the question of why your students and teachers are co-located in the same space for X hours per day?
Leadership requires serious reconsideration of heuristics like homework, testing, grading and age segregation. These discussions need to be public and your constituents need to know where you stand or how you are thinking.
International schools are blessed with an embarrassment of riches and resources that most educators would covet. However, international schools also suffer from a number of self-inflicted constraints that are on the wrong side of history. Despite their independence, wealth, talent and outstanding facilities, many international schools refuse to innovate because they THINK it will be bad for business. That’s why they too many have discriminatory admissions policies, promise every parent that their six year-old is Harvard-bound and chase IB, AP and every other curricular fads that makes their schools indistinguishable. The prevalent assumption of international schools that kids with mobility will not miss a single day of the US, British or UK curriculum is folly and a noose around the neck of innovation. (The best schools have already abandoned centralized inflexible curricula like the AP while less secure schools grab on with both hands.)
Reflective school leaders know that this homogeneity of approach is ridiculous, unrealistic and ignores the diverse needs, interests and talents of children. Ultimately, it is also bad for the business of international schools.
In many places, you are in the catbird’s seat. If a parent needs a school for their English-speaking child, you may be the only game in town. Yet, far too many international school leaders lack the courage necessary to articulate a unique educational stance and say, “we do things differently for the following reasons…” If you have a waiting list, you do not have to pander.
I truly believe there is a significant market for schools that are not Oxford/Harvard Prep and designed for the children who are good at “doing school.”
Being a franchise of Oxford/Harvard Prep is no way to do good or to do well. That model makes your school more easily replaced by YouTube videos and online testing.
At the very least, school leaders should recognize that people learn differently and invest in some “school within a school” programs where alternative models may be offered to children and parents. Boeing spends billions annually on planes that never fly while schools spend almost nothing on R&D despite the constant rhetoric about innovation. My experience is that whenever parents are offered a chance at a different educational experience for their child, they will seize it. Alternative programs within your school serve as incubators of innovation and may drive future practice in ways you can’t possibly anticipate.
In summary, What if the policy of your school was to make every day the best seven hours of a child’s life?
Best Wishes on your journey,
Gary
Hi Gary,
Thanks for your comment. Really appreciate you spending the time to to respond and I especially like your final question about ‘the policy of your school was to make every day the best seven hours of a child’s life?’
Figure out a definition for ‘best’ would be contentious, and I am not sure that is something policy can dictate, but the question get one thinking! Thanks.
As a teacher leader in my district, I can only tell you that I work in several schools and the ones where the teachers are “doing” are those where the leaders are also “doing.” If you want your students to be blogging, communicating, publishing to a greater audience and interacting around the world with other students in other schools, then your teachers should be doing this. For your teachers to do this, then you need to lead by example. I hear a lot of leaders talk about wanting change and transformation in their schools, but I only see it happening where the leaders are walking the talk. One of the best quotes I’ve seen recently is from Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach: “Teachers will not be replaced by technology, but teachers who don’t use technology will be replaced by those who do.”
The role of all people in highly connected world is simple–share what you are learning as you learn it. Rather than rail against the slings and arrows, rather than fear being made obsolete, delight in your learning, the sharing, and the connections you make with others.
Let me say it again–delight in the learning conversations and blogging will ever be a balm to the disappointment you encounter, and provide succor to those you never imagined you would impact.
All because you simply had the courage to be vulnerable, to bear witness to the frailty of being less than omnipotent.
Oh…I also recommend reading Crucial Conversations and Crucial Confrontations.
Warm regards,
Miguel Guhlin
Around the Corner-MGuhlin.org
http://mguhlin.org
I don’t think it is a question of priorities. It is a question of how you choose to meet those priorities. Just like we are asking staff to change their delivery paradigm, so also administrators need to change their delivery paradigm. Administrators need to lead the way. Use technology to help you deliver your “administrivia” which actually allows you to do more of what an effective school administrator should be doing, helping educators to be even better at what they need to do.
Most of our staff meetings need to be “flipped” just like most of what our staff are doing in their classrooms needs to be “flipped.” Let the discussions, presentations, etc. for staff meetings go on outside of the meeting via blogs or wikis, and let the meetings be more focused.
Use technology for walk-through evaluations to give staff more input and allow them to give immediate feedback to you on what was observed. Let this become an ongoing discussion of improving delivery of education in your building.
Use technology to engage in an ongoing feedback discussion with parents and other stakeholders in your educational system.
These are just a few thoughts that I had after reading your post.
Thanks Keith. I especially like the idea about ‘flipping’. I read a great book a few years ago called “Death by Meeting”: (http://www.amazon.com/Death-Meeting-Leadership-Fable-About-Business/dp/0787968056) Cheers.
Excellent questions!!
I imagine that your schedule must be horrifying so I sympathize with your dilemma. I would, however, differ with your appreciation of blogging per se. As a language teacher I do think that writing organizes your thoughts and often forces you to take a stance. I often find that my ideas are much clearer after I’ve had to write a speech, a proposal, a letter or a blog entry or comment, such as this one.
As a former principal, I also feel that a public forum clarifies ideas and beliefs for colleagues, students, parents, and the community at large.
A disposition? Open-mindedness to learn from others and explore.
An activity? Connecting purposefully.
A skill? Listening well.
Probably not so different from 20 years ago except for the change in media and the greater awareness that learning is fundamentally a social enterprise.
As educational leaders we must show and teach others how important it is to interact meaningfully in this world of information and communication overload.
Thanks for the valuable opportunity for reflection and good luck in your quest.
Ana Maria Ternent de Samper
Education Consultant
@asamper
Bogota, Colombia
Hi Ana,
I think you are right that the underlying skills remain very similar but the form may be changing and, like others, you have highlighted the need to model these behaviours. Thanks for replying!
Leadership is allabout realizing the possibilities of our unique circumstances. Vision helps define these possibilities into a picture of what could be and the key to translating this into reality is in creating a shared vision.
It takes a team to turn vision into reality. A shared vision is one that others buy into and help translate into reality. It’s also one that people hold onto, rally around, nurture, and sustain
Two years ago a bunch of individuals who joined our school attracted by “the vision” asked “so what is the vision”. It was time For a conversation. To share ideas, dream, question and imagine possibilities.
Vision is the aspiration of what is possible and empowers creativity and energizes problem solving and productivity
Visions can’t be static.
The school leader is the banner carrier of the vision. The patron, the potector, the champion. Visions are complex multi dimensional ideas and the leader is a navigator drawing the lines between the stars to turn a galaxy of bright ideas into a recognizable constellation and charting the aspirational journey
Hi John,
Thanks for getting in on the conversation. Vision is something that has come up as a theme here and I certainly agree it is essential. It is one of those terms that can be open to interpretation though, and I think this is one of the challenges. But I like your summary.
Head of an International School? What could be more important. You not only lead by practice and by example but by inspiring your school and others in the international school networks to tackle the challenges of a globalized, interconnected world. Making the transition from our 20th century forms of learning to a 21st century digital environment is one of our biggest challenges in society. Good luck with your work!
I with Darren Kuropatwa, about his Dispositions, Activities and Skills. As a leader of school passion and compassion is very importance in doing all the task for the benefit of all the school reputation and the students as well. Thanks for sharing
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