For class this week, one of our assignments was to read the next two chapters (ch. 2 & 3) in our text, How to Thrive as a Teacher Leader. I loved reading Chapter 1 as it described many leadership roles that a teacher could select besides the one role that most teachers think they must choose to be in a leadership position - administration. Chapter 2 was more difficult for me to be really excited about like I was in Chapter 1; Chapter 2 was all about "assembling your team" which really boils down to finding and interviewing candidates. The author really stressed making sure that teacher leaders are part of the interview team and even suggests that the teacher leader(s) should run the interview. The analogy that Gabriel uses is this: "The front office and ownership make suggestions, and many of them can be fruitful, but it is the coaches - who are not as distanced as management because they are on the field with the players day in and day out and best understand what must be done - who make the logical personnel decisions" (Gabriel, pg 26). I could really relate to this analogy, and it drives home the importance of teachers being involved in the interview process since the teachers are the ones who will be working with the newly hired individuals the closest. The next part of the chapter is where I started to question if this is completely relevant in today's economy and teacher career environment...the part about "expanding the applicant pool". Is it necessary, in order to get enough and a variety of applicants to apply for a position, to go out and recruit for applicants at places as the author suggests - practicum & student teachers, professional memberships and conferences, churches, bazaars, & community events, etc? Any friend or colleague that I've ever talked to about the applicant pool when he/she would send in a resume for an opening says that there are always SO many applicants in the running. A few years ago a friend of mine who teaches at the elementary level, said that she was told that there were 300 applications put in for ONE position! That leads me to think that "expanding the applicant pool" might not be as necessary as Gabriel makes it out to be. It seems like posting a position on WECAN, DPI, the school website, and maybe an email out on a professional organization listserv will probably do the trick of getting the word out to more than enough people. Am I off base when I say this? Again, on page 41 Gabriel starts off his "Placing Your Hires" section with this: "With such high turnover in education..."; is this true? I don't see the education field like this.
Chapter 3, entitled "Interpersonal Leadership - Communicating Your Leadership" was a lot of the same principles that I teach my Intro to Business students about softskills/employability skills. One of the first paragraphs of this chapter talked about work-related email being formal in nature and that the format should reflect that (Gabriel, 47). In regards to this statement, I couldn't agree more. When sending a work-related email I think it should always start with a greeting and end with a signature. It is a HUGE pet peeve of mine when an email is sent when the email just jumps right into the message without evening saying my name or "hi" in the beginning or when it just ends promptly without the sender saying his/her name. The text goes on to talk about being a responsive leader and responding to emails within a 24 hour timeframe. This is what is expected of us at school. With so much of the communication taking place between people taking the form of email or some other digital medium, the expectation is that the messages should be professional and timely. I look down highly upon messages that are so obviously sent without much thought, time, or respect for the recipient(s) but instead in haste. It is all part of the job to be an effective, respectful communicator 100% of the time.
The last part of the chapter talks about setting goals and creating a mission statement to help provide some direction to the leadership of the group/department/committee. This suggestion is such obvious advice but something that I would really like to bring to my department as well as to the Tech Committee and the 1:1 Committee. Especially with the Tech Committee, I felt like we were spinning our wheels last year without a whole lot of leadership, guidance, or direction. It was difficult to feel really productive after leaving the meeting; we always would have really good discussions but it would often end at that. Establishing three SMART goals and drafting a mission statement would definitely help this group of people see the end in mind and then be able to create some action steps towards attaining the goals. We have a meeting on Tuesday so I'm excited to suggest this to see what their response is. Whenever we are talking about a topic, money is usually the driving force behind whether we do it or not. If we wouldn't focus on the obstacle but instead on the goal, we can then put together an action plan of how to make the goal attainable.
Keyboard pic: http://www.sxc.hu/photo/1208426
Football goal pic: http://www.sxc.hu/photo/241906
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