Week 3: Leadership and Organization Characteristics

What I liked best about these section in AMLE was the part that focused on ongoing professional development for middle school teachers.  I think it's important for teachers to constantly be thinking about how they can help students improve academically and personally.  This is can be accomplished when teachers form learning communities to share ideas, sessions where instructional and assessment strategies can be reviewed or by attending workshops with other teachers to improve practices or content knowledge.  

I believe what goes hand-in-hand with this is also a lot of self-reflection.  I work with a lot of teachers that are really great at self-reflecting.  If their students are not grasping a concept they take time to reflect on themselves and what they could have done to improve their projects, lessons or method of delivery the message.  I've seen the opposite where a teacher doesn't partake in and self-reflection and just blames the students for not understanding.  They use excuses like students are too tired, don't care or just don't like school.  Some of these may be true, but then it is a teacher's job to pull the best of from a student to get motivated and stay on task.

Another topic the AMLE text focuses on, which I absolutely love and can't agree more with, is that the school environment has to be inviting, safe, inclusive and supportive.  You can tell immediately the culture and climate when you begin walking around the hallways.  If a school reflects a positive environment, the interactions among students and staff are pleasant, uplifting and demonstrate fairness and respect.  This also can be seen between the staff members of a school.  Creating a positive environment helps with eliminating harassment, bullying, and name-calling.  It's like every part of a school (hallways, bathrooms, lunchroom, etc.) is part of the school community. Collaboration is key too.  Students and staff need to work together to make this environment inclusive, safe and supportive.  

In the article, Five Key Responsibilities - The School Principal as Leader: Guiding Schools to Better Teaching and Learning, what really stuck out for me was the #3 responsibility: cultivating leadership in others.  Leaders in a school and all walks of life and all kinds of organizations, public or private need to depend on others to accomplish the group's purpose.  Also, leaders need to encourage the development of leadership.  I see this happening first-hand at my school with our principal.  He is an amazing advocate for his employees and a true leader.  He wants all of us to step into leadership roles throughout our day at school.  He believes in us and has trust in us.  He wants us to succeed at our job and tries to d everything he can to make that happen.  One last point from the article that I really loved stated that effective leadership, whether that's the principal, staff or administration, is associated with better student performance on math and reading tests.