Students are creating more and influencing their own learning journey. Teachers roles are changing so that we’re spending less time in the front of the room, less time lecturing, more time engaging and empowering. How do our administrators and schools need to change to better support both students and teachers?
I want my administrators to be part of my professional learning network. I want them to challenge me, make me think, discuss with me, listen to me. I want them to visit my classroom and talk to my students and learn from them and about them. I want my live community to be as vibrant and energetic as my online community. Am I asking for too much?
A recent conversation had me thinking about my successes and my challenges in my job. I want to feel valued as a professional. I don’t want my concerns to be dismissed. I want conversations that involve my peers in discussions of pedagogical practice. How can I structure my approach to my colleagues and administrators so that we’re always working without a framework of respect for self and each other?
I can be more diplomatic but I’m not always, especially when I am impassioned. How does that saying go? Something about the honey gathering more bees than the something else? I guess the point is that approach is important. My pledge is to not be silenced, to never lose my passion for education, to continually reflect but to use more honey and less salt in my expression, and to always try my utmost to apply the first principles of respect and empathy. If nothing else, it’ll contribute to collegiality within my live community, an important requirement to work effectively with others.
Sounds like what you are aiming at is a work environment where admins are guides and collaborators rather than dictators (used in the literal sense of the word, not the political, although you want to avoid those, too). It’s the same, as you imply, as the changing role of teachers in the classroom – teachers aren’t “dictating” from the front, rather they are turning into guides and models and collaborators. It’s a two-way exchange. It’s hard for teachers to give up the control they have traditionally exercised over a classroom… I think it’s probably similarly difficult for traditional admins to give up that same position of control. I would say – in the end, the best ideas win. And if I’m allowed to add my own cliches, patience is a virtue. 🙂
I am still learning how to approach my new job, what is expected, where I need to go further, where I have gone too far and am teetering on the edge. Your last two paragraphs are where I am right now, trying to find the balance in working with my colleagues. It’s a challenge to work at encouraging collaboration when sometimes I would prefer to just DO something and then say..”.that’s the way, do it this way”.
More honey, less salt. good words