Not surprisingly, most of the qualities he mentions are qualities we expect of our students (see, for example, IB learner profile). Modeling for students and collaborating with them are two that stood out for me. Check out the list and see what you think.

The purpose of supervision (as it applies to the relationship between a school leader and school teachers) is:

To assist in creating a tone

• A tone of respect
• A tone of inclusion
• A tone of caring
• A tone of professionalism
• A tone of reflection
• A tone of “doing it better”
• A tone of celebration

To assist in crafting a vision

• Where are we versus where do we want to be

To assist in collaboration on goals leading to the vision

To assist in assessing improvement—movement towards the vision—and help in changing, adjusting, reformulating goals for continued improvement

To assist in caring for teachers—not only professionally but personally

To assist in the self-actualization of teachers

• Here I’m alluding to Aristotle’s view that life’s goal is to attain a state loosely translated as happiness but upon inspection refers to fulfilling the measure of our creation—i.e. to be excellent human beings, to live excellently. This comes about as a result of reflecting on our present state and constantly striving for oneness with our ideals. Bringing it back down to earth in the teaching realm, the supervisor can help teachers become “self-actualized” by providing opportunities for constant reflection, reinforcing a common vision of what it is to be an “excellent” teacher, and working together to make that vision a reality. In the process, the supervisor also moves towards self-actualization.

All of these with the goal of educating learners (understanding that defining “educating learners” is the preeminent precursor to all else) and helping them become fulfilled human beings.

Note that with all of these “purposes” I have used words such as assist, help, and collaborate. This speaks to my view that supervision is most effective when it is collaborative. Yes, the school leader sets the tone and gets the ball rolling, but from there I prefer that mission, vision, aims, improvement, policy-making, etc. is collaborative. The problem I have run into with teachers new to my style is that they sometimes find it unsettling initially, that Kevin is not a strong leader because he isn’t dictating to me from on high. My hope is that in time they realize that it takes considerably more leadership and effort to pull people together on a common task than to tell them what to do.

In regards to the reading, in chapters 4 and 5 Glickman spent considerable time on numbers 3, 4, 5, and 6 in my echelon. I was first given pause by the considerable time devoted to knowing my teachers, though it is patently clear that the better I know them, the better I can supervise them. The corollary to this is I cannot expect to treat all of my faculty the same way, as they are sometimes far separated in age, experience, and expertise. The need for tailoring my approach based on these and other factors hit me right between the eyes. The research points out something that is intuitively true but which I hadn’t internalized into my practice.

A further insight I gained was the importance of ensuring that teachers feel secure and of providing proper pastoral care for them. As with students, so with teachers: If a student is having non-academic problems in or out of school, it’s going to affect her performance. Likewise with teachers. Glickman cites Merriam and Clark’s study:

One of Merriam and Clark’s most significant findings was the predominance of work-related learning for both men and women and the evidence that more learning occurs when things are going well in both arenas (work and family life). However, learning that led to a real perspective transformation most often was associated with coping with the difficult times in either work (e.g., being fired) or family life (e.g., losing a parent). Since much of the most significant adult learning appears to be from life experience, the role of the supervisor may be critical in helping teachers to experience growth as an outcome of unsettling life experiences in the professional, personal, or family domains. Although the supervisor need not and should not assume the role of therapist, one implication of the social roles models of adult development is that a teacher’s personal, family, and professional roles interact with and affect each other and need to be addressed holistically by supervision (Glickman 75).

Mashable today published results of a Google survey asking Wave users (of which I am one), “What do you like and dislike about Google Wave?” I have to agree with the consensus that while I love the concept, I cannot currently do anything with it because there are not enough of my friends connected. My guess is that it won’t be fully useful to me for a year or two. In the meantime, I’m “waving” with my wife only, which is kind of silly when we’re in proximity to each other much of the day.

All of that said, I think the Wave approach could be revolutionary and change the way we communicate and collaborate online. It will require a bit of a worldview shift for most netizens, however.

I do have some invitations if you’d like to get in on the Beta phase of Google Wave; if you’re interested, email me. Below is a short video explaining how the Wave works.

Right now, my school is using webmail hosted by the same company as our website. Apart from that, admin and teachers are collaborating on documents and policies via a wiki hosted by Wikispaces. We store most documents on the wiki (as well as hard drives), but some are stored in other places. Our need for a communicative and collaborative platform which integrates calendar, online storage, student work, etc. is immense. And Google Apps seems to have everything we could need. The major challenge will be implementation.

Folks tend to have an aversion to change, even when it’s warranted and needed, but that’s where a leader needs to come in and clearly communicate the benefits of the change and ensure stakeholders of proper training while in the process. And that’s my job. There’s no doubt that there will be resistance, but I’m confident that as teachers, staff and administrators give change a chance, they will see the benefits our school will accrue by transitioning to Google Apps. I’ll report back about how that’s going.

Below, I’ve included two videos illustrating the benefits of Google App for schools. Let me know what you think.

Over the summer I had the absolute pleasure of participating in a course at the Principals’ Training Center for International School Leadership (PTC), and I have to say, it was the most valuable–and intensely demanding–professional development I have received in 18 years as an educator. The course title was “Creating and Administering an Effective School,” and the training was expertly honed to the topic by presenters/facilitators Bambi Betts and Julie Ryan. I gained a multitude of insights, but I’d like to direct my comments to the ones that stood out the most to me.

Teacher/teaching quality is, by far, the most accurate indicator of a school’s success.
As our pre-reading for the course, the PTC required us to read an accessible and concise book titled, “How the World’s Best-Performing School Systems Come Out on Top.” The central thesis is that there is no substitute for a good classroom teacher. The authors deeply investigated school systems around the world and came to the clear conclusion that all of the best-performing school districts place great emphasis on hiring and training the best teaching candidates. Teachers in those systems were offered good but not necessarily great packages. However, systems invested considerable time and money into training their teachers and providing a supportive, nurturing environment for them.

While this is not revelatory, it does provide insights into why some schools are “better” than others. In my experience, schools which funnel a lot of money into the external and/or superficial and don’t recognize the importance of placing top teachers first are destined to prolong their progress, if they progress at all.

Student learning is the focal point of all we do.
Considerable time at the PTC was devoted to the importance of student learning. Again, this is nothing new, but how often do we as educators and administrators get lost in minutiae to the detriment of learning? Stated another way, I, as an administrator, should not make many, if any, decisions before asking myself, “How is this going to impact student learning?”

To drive home this point, our first day we were introduced to “Maria,” a fictitious student seated in a chair in the center of our meeting room. We were admonished to keep Maria in mind in all of our activities that week. While this was a simple ploy, it was simply effective in keeping us focused on what and who really matter.

Mission, vision, and principles come first.
As we require a compass to find our way through challenging environments, so we need core principles to keep us on track when thousands of voices are calling for our attention. Our course strongly emphasized that effective schools have a clear mission and philosophy in which all major stakeholders have a deep understanding and investment. When we see ourselves diverting from the path, our mission, vision and principles provide us with an anchor which, if referred to often, will keep us from being tossed off course by the storms around us.

The right people need to be doing the right things.
How often do schools organize themselves around subject specific or grade level departments just because that’s how it’s always done? We discussed in depth how that our most talented people need to be leading our curricular, activities, and other groups within the school. These people may or may not be in the same department or grade level as the people on their committees or in their groups. Let your best people shine and bring other colleagues up with them.

Teachers should not be working in a vacuum.
Collaboration is an essential component and skill of effective schools and today’s workplace as a whole. Quite simply, we learn more when we collaborate, and we need to model this collaboration for our students. If we aren’t sold on the collaboration, our students won’t be, either.

Teachers need to be models.
How many times have you been to a meeting at school and thought, “Why does my leader tell me to teach one way, and conducts the meeting in the exact opposite way? Shouldn’t I model my leader in the classroom?” One thing I loved about my 7-day course at the PTC is that the presenters practice what they preach. They were not dominating course time; rather we were stimulated into discussion and/or action and then directed to get to it while they facilitated closely. In short, we should practice what we preach and preach correct principles based on the latest research.

While I learned an incredible amount during my seven days, teacher quality, student learning, the importance of mission, properly organizing people, collaborating, and modeling were the learnings that have been in the forefront of my mind since the conclusion of the course. Much of what I’m doing in this new school year is a result of the summer training I received, and I have every intention of attending PTC courses this school year and into the future.

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It seems clear that the best type of education centers on information discovery and processing, making connections, and collaboration and community. I read an informative piece by Will Richardson about the importance of building community as a precursor to the introduction of new learning tools. That is, unless I understand how to best use the tools within the context of a personal learning network, my understanding and internalization of concepts will not be as deep. Richardson:

It’s difficult to understand the impact that online learning networks and communities can bring (and their potential downsides) without being a part of them.

We need to do personally what we expect our students to do in the classroom; proper modeling cannot be underestimated. How will I inspire my students to do classroom blogs unless I cannot point them to the joy and fulfillment I find in blogging? How can I encourage them to collaborate if I cannot demonstrate how I collaborate in a variety of media? Richardson continues:

As Linda Darling-Hammond suggests, “…teachers need to learn the way other professionals do—continually, collaboratively, and on the job.”

Yet, I suspect that some of us educators are standing pat and not extending ourselves in this way.

Our continued emphasis on tools in pd misses that larger point, obviously, because the power of the Read/Write web is not the ability to publish; it’s the ability to connect. Broken record, I know, but tools are easy; connections are hard.

Image by D’Arcy Norman

I do most of my personal learning and information gathering in the following ways:

• aggregating feeds of interest into my Google Reader
• receiving news alerts of interest on educational and other topics into Google Reader
• searching for articles of interest in Digg
• Facebook–I get lots of good info from my friends, including video which is right on the page
• blogging–this is by far my most professionally valuable activity as it compels me to do research, consider issues, and basically get it right
• Ning groups

For personal and classroom collaboration, I recommend:

• Ning–create your own customized classroom or school network. A one-stop shop for much of what you’ll want to do.
• An online docs sharing network such as Google docs (not preferred due to formatting issues) or, better yet, Box.net
• Twitter (if it’s fully functional)
• Google suite of tools, including Google Docs, Google Sites, etc.
• Email still works
• Ustream for live presentations
• Slideshare for slideshows
• Class blogs for reflection and information
• Class wikis for gathering and making sense of information

Thoughts?