As a new volunteer at St. Mary’s School in Canton, NY I was recently acquainted with the administration of Latchkey. Latchkey is an afterschool program for students at St. Mary’s that’s held in the school’s gymnasium. The program provides the kids with an opportunity to do schoolwork and play games if they are unable to go home directly after school. The program is run by a few adults and is facilitated by St. Lawrence students. Within the past few weeks I’ve witnessed the established style of leadership that drives Latchkey and the roles that the leaders and students have adopted. Although this style is sufficient for the program’s operation I believe the children would have a more fulfilling experience if this style was changed. Several adults work together to guide Latchkey. They are responsible for supervising the children, setting up activities, creating an agenda, and enforcing the rules. Mr. Alzo, the head of the program, set the main precedent for the …show more content…
Mary’s is effective, but it can definitely be improved. Latchkey’s main goal is to provide a safe place for children to stay after school, and that has been met with the present establishment. However, I think the program should reaffirm its values and aim for higher goals. The relationship between the kids and the program leaders is distant which hinders the overall capability of the program. Instead of having a hands-off leadership approach everyone involved in Latchkey should be active participants. This would clarify what is expected of the children as well as the adults. I also think those responsible for running Latchkey should communicate and determine what kind of experience they want the kids to have. Then, the program leaders would be more confident in their own leadership style and their individual spin on the after school program. These aforementioned changes would help the Latchkey organization develop a greater sense of identity and
Connecting people to the success of the district is one matter, but asking them to support it financially is another. The district is growing in size and is in need of new facilities and internal academic structures to support the growth. As the district continues to grow she is challenged with ensuring that the schools continue to interact with each other and do not return to the independent silos they were when she arrived. Ms. Hall realizes that she is the internal and external face of the district. She takes that very seriously and therefore, tires to view challenges as opportunities and successes as building blocks and
Throughout the years of being a student at Council Rock, I have come to the realization of what a true leader is. A leader is not someone that just plans events, collects money, or shows up to meetings. Rather, this is someone that has a true connection with their peers, and has unmatched passion for what they do. With this, I can confidently say that since seventh grade, as a young adult, I have been shaped into an individual that fits these traits. Since that time, I have been involved in student government,
The Child Development Center of College of San Mateo provides early care and educational programs for children between the ages of 3 to 5 years old. Children are divided into classrooms with a “master” teacher, a “regular” teacher, and two or three “associate” teachers. Klara attended Classroom, “A,” a stimulating and well-resourced classroom. Klara was observed for two hours on Monday from 9 am to 11 am and for two hours on Wednesday from 9 am to 11 am. During these two hours, classroom activities consisted of “free time,” “story time,” and an outside “play time.” A “master” teacher, a “regular” teacher, and two “associate” teachers were present during observations. Additionally, a total of eighteen children were in attendance during the observed days.
“When schools, parents, families, and communities work together to support learning, students tend to earn higher grades, attend school more regularly, stay in school longer, and enroll in higher level programs.” (Van Roeckel, 2008, p. 1) Deer Valley High School in Glendale, AZ is the first high school built in the Deer Valley Unified Scholl District, and with a population around 1800 students, the high school is one of the bigger schools in the state. It has a tradition of family on its’ campus, where there are still teachers teaching that were there when the school opened in 1980. A number of former students have become new teachers on campus and just about all the teachers’ children have attended and graduated from the campus. With a school like ours, there are many connections to the community around it and it is demonstrated by the programs that bring in parent and community to help with the development of our students. There are numerous booster clubs run on our campus to help support student achievement on the sports fields, a school to work programs to teach the students necessary skills in different areas of either nursing, sports medicine classes, and in the culinary arts classrooms, and funding to our school to help ensure all students graduate on time. There are many programs on our campus, but I will discuss four of the programs: baseball booster club, C2G program, “school-to-work”, and the special education program sponsored by Arrowhead Hospital. These programs are designed to improve the relationships between the campus and the people in the community, and give all students on campus every opportunity to succeed in their future.
Slavitch and Zimbardo (2012) assert that adult learners desire to improve their understandings by adjusting their “frames of reference,” including their points of view and habits of mind. In the case of the grade change initiative, the frames of reference were shaped by the parents, students, and administration. The committee entered the situation already having used instrumental learning to arrive at a solution. Their jobs to “reframe” the teachers’ beliefs and practices was able to work through the committee’s use of modified andragogy, allowing the teachers to discover their own truths as educators (Mezirow, 1997). Although entering the situation with an already-decided, seemingly autocratic decision in place, the committee was able to use their passionate transformative skills to win the teachers over to their side. The teachers’ self-discovery then enabled them to believe their decision was a wholly democratic one, which was not quite the case. As cited in Slavitch and Zimbardo (2012), Bass and Riggio’s (2010) explanation of transformational leadership perfectly embdodies DKJA’s grade change initiative: the follows were inspired to be a part of a shared vision, they had to challenge themselves to be problem solvers, and their leaders both challenged and supported them at all times. The teachers’ decision to “put themselves on the line” and “take one for the team” showed their allegiance to the group and their desire to be a part of something authentic, fulfilling, and true to themselves as both humans and
The strategic plan for improving chronically low performing schools will utilize a leadership component, and four phases. The four phases are equivalent to the frames of Bolman and Deal. Bolman and Deal (2003) discuss four frames: Structural, Human Resource, Political, and Symbolic. They define the frames as follows: Structural- reflects a belief in rationality and a faith that th...
Marzano, R. J., Waters, T. & McNulty, B. A. (2005). School Leadership that Works: From Research to Results. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.
Mork taking the time to share his views of administration leadership styles and strategies allowed me to gain knowledge of the reasons why certain decisions were made at Crescent School and why information was presented in the manner it was. This discussion also helped me to develop some of my own thoughts about how I would like to have things run when I am an administrator.
School administrators are important in setting the path for a successful school (Glickman, et al., 2014). The principals could play a dynamic leadership depending on how they exercise their beliefs of the organizational and social environment (McNair, 2011). The principals are the primary facilitators for developing the foundations in learning that will last, to manage the student’s performance at schools, and seeking the improvement at school that will cause great impacts in school‘s education (Gordon,1989). In the recent years in the U.S., education has change in a more cultural diversity population, it is imperative that school supervisors, are trained to encounter this cultural issues, but also assisting others with the opportunities to develop appropriate abilities to deal with different cultures (Glickman, et al., 2014).
With the passage of NCLB, many school reform efforts have been initiated using top-down model in which each school leaders have been charged with initiating bold administrative changes to address the legislation. With the number of leadership theories and models, researchers have become interested in studying those to determine which might bring forth the most significant results for leading such change. Due to the lack of highly qualified administrators and the increasing demands for administrators, Bush, O’Brien & Spangler (2005) studied a program, the Southern Tier Leadership Academy, a collaborative of the New York Education Department. The study included three separate cohorts who completed an eight month program. Whereas, Somech (2005) chose to investigate directive and participative leadership approaches, and which would more significantly impact school effectiveness. Perhaps Somech’s reflect Scherer’s (2009, p.7) understandings as described in Educational Leadership, ‘broom-wielding leadership can indeed be beneficial’ as is putting advocates into positions of power and influence and building teams, both of which are seemingly contrasting opposites.
Authoritative child-rearing “involves high acceptance and involvement, adaptive control techniques, and appropriate autonomy granting.” (Laura 216) In other words, there are guidelines, standards, the parents are enabling, supportive, flexible, assertive, but the relationship between the parents and children serves as democratic.... ... middle of paper ... ...
Thomas Sergiovanni (2015) describes three essential dimensions of leadership as “the heart, head, and hand of leadership.” The heart describes those characteristics within the school leader that reflect personal “beliefs, values, and dreams.” The head of leadership refers to the practice of teaching and educating. The hand of leadership reflects actions taken by school leaders with respect to management behaviors. (p. 5) Within these elements, there is room for personal choice in how leadership is practiced and it is incumbent on new principals to find an individual leadership style that responds to the uniqueness of each school.
There is a connection between school culture and leadership styles. The literature review will also address the two basic categories of leadership. According to Cox (2001), there are two basic categories of leadership which are transactional and transformational. The following scholars (Barnett, McCormick & Conners, 2001) made the distinction between transactional and transformational leadership. James McGregor Burns’ (1998) introduces Burns the difference between ordinary (transactional) and extraordinary (transformational) leaders. According to James McGregor Burns’ (1998) transactional leaders exchanged tangible rewards for the work and loyalty of followers, and (transformational) leaders are the ones who engaged with followers. Additionally, the focused on higher order intrinsic needs, and raised consciousness about the significance of specific outcomes.
laid out on appropriate behaviors, with that comes discipline. Discipline is the number one thing
Having Steven Covey’s Habit 5, “seek first to understand, then to be understood”, as one of my guiding principles, a first step in the change process at XYZ Middle School would be to hold several roundtable discussions with stakeholders from staff and students to parents and community as a means of comprehending how the complexities of the changing demographics are impacting the school. The school has made some organizational changes to adapt (which may account for the higher test scores at some grade levels), but suspensions and insubordination have risen while teacher retention remains low. This seems to indicate that change efforts need to be focused on the culture of the school through building relationships and capacity to effectively educate the students. Therefore, I would concentrate my change efforts on issues such as staff development that bridge understanding of the intricacies of educating a student population that is 99% free/reduced lunch such as Ruby Paynes A Framework for Understanding Poverty. As a staff, we would, also, evaluate the school’s mission and develop academic and discipline school norms that embody it and a “we do” spirit of efficacy. I believe school