Developed+Leadership+Statement

=My Developed Statement of Leadership Philosophy: =

As I think back to where I started at the beginning of this program, I was a first year teacher beginning her third teaching position of the school year. The following year I accepted yet another new position as part of the team that developed a new school and opened its doors last fall. In reflecting on my initial leadership statement, a lot of my main ideas on leadership still stand in my current leadership philosophy. Rather, I believe I have grown into the philosophy I hoped to develop, worked towards elements I thought would be important as a leader, and have set new goals in result of my accomplishments and where I am currently at professionally.

I still believe I am an intrinsic, task-oriented leader. I continue to be a very organized person, both in the classroom, implementing the opening of our new school, and completing the principalship license. As a task-oriented leader, one of my roles on our team is to create the agenda for each meeting. Even though I have always been a strong leader in getting work done and being productive, I think my leadership philosophy has changed to incorporate looking ahead and being prepared for future situations. Throughout the year and a half planning process to open Catalyst, our team had a lot of planning, organizing, and developing to do with every aspect of a school. As I developed my leadership role on the team, I began to really look ahead to things that needed to be done in the future and how to be prepared for those situations. In doing so, I helped my principal create the daily schedule for Catalyst and continue to create the schedule for students and teachers in each project we do throughout the year. Within my principalship, a strong component of my internship was working on the master schedule. In doing so, I have seen an increase in my awareness of what is going on in the school outside of my own classroom and being able to embrace the full vision of the school and not just my individual teaching or students. In the classroom, I have seen students improve their understanding of why they are learning something and how the content is interconnected. By showing students the future vision or goal, they get the full understanding of a project and how all of the little lessons and activities fit together. Also, I incorporate goal setting in the classroom, which allows students to look into their future and plan ahead as well.

In order to lead by example, I have modified my leadership philosophy to include the ability to find solutions. Early on in my first year of teaching, I found that my principal would not give staff members a direct answer to a problem or issue (unless truly needed), but rather would challenge staff members to develop solutions, present them to him (or to the team it concerned) and make a decision based on ideas, reasoning, and data. As a leader, I have consciously been working toward not just pointing out things that are not working or could be improved, but trying to find possible solutions to make the situations or problem better or solved. Additionally, I now see the importance and significance in making decisions based on data and evidence to back it up. In doing so, I have developed the philosophy that a leader needs to take initiative and be proactive to not only discover things that need to be changed, but develop ways to make them better. I have incorporated this same idea and mindset into the classroom and with my students. I apply this as a teacher by finding different ways to meet students' needs and understanding of topics when something is not working the first time. I have instilled this same concept into my students by having them embrace ownership in their work, try to figure things out on their own or with their peers before running to the teacher, and even giving them the opportunity and choice to come up with solutions to situations that are not working for them individually or for a group/class. Within my internship, I have applied this mindset to dealing with student issues. I have learned that it is important to let the student do most of the talking and tell you what is going on, ways they believe the issue or problem could be solved, what he/she needs help with, or what kind of consequence would best fit the situation if needed. I have also had some practice with this in dealing with other staff members as my principal had me work with other teams to solve problems, come up with solutions, and look at the data to make decisions.

One of my goals of my initial leadership philosophy was to become more of an advocate for myself in standing up for myself and others. Throughout my experiences in the educational leadership graduate program, teaching in the classroom, and my principal internship, I have purposefully worked to gain more self advocacy. With the new teaching style I am applying in Catalyst, I have had to work together with a team of people more than I ever had to before. In doing so, I have had many opportunities to gain experience and confidence in being able to speak up for myself, my thoughts and my beliefs. Our team is constantly talking about things we need to change, modify, drop, or add to our projects and lessons to make them better. Throughout these discussions, disagreements may arise and I have had to learn when to speak my mind and when to listen to others. This is a difficult task, but a critical one for a person to be an effective leader. I believe I have started to make progress on this goal, but will continue to work on this throughout my career. Within my internship I learned to advocate for myself in making sure I gain experience and knowledge in each of the administrative standards. A lot of what I worked on with my principal was driven by questions I had and areas I wanted experience in.

Finally, in my initial leadership philosophy I stated that building relationships and working with others was very important to me as a leader. As I have gone through this program, I believe my feelings toward this have grown stronger. I believe that collaboration and teamwork are essential pieces needed in a strong leader. A strong leader knows how to take initiative, when it is appropriate to do so, and how to work well with others to balance things out. In working closely with the core teachers in Catalyst, this has been a constant thought and effort on my part. With the project-based learning approach, teamwork and collaboration are key as the students and teachers have to work together to be successful. Teachers must work together to develop multi-grade level projects and lessons that we integrate together. Students must learn to work together to accomplish different tasks, learn from each other, and explore the topics being taught through the interdisciplinary projects. In my internship, I applied this mindset to working with other colleagues on administrative duties and working with students. Some staff members were a little uneasy with a young teacher working on administrative duties with the principal. I really had to work to build a different relationship with them so they knew I was there to help them and work with them, not spy on them and report information to the principal. I had many positive interactions with teachers in my administrative role in dealing with student issues, scheduling questions, after school activities, etc. In working with students, my internship gave me a chance to create a different relationship with students in my school. It allowed me to meet many students I otherwise never would have known, interact again with students I had in the past, create different relationships with my current students, and meet students I will have in the future. I found that building that basic relationship with students helps deal with the touch situations when they come up.

The main change I have seen in myself and my leadership philosophy is that a strong leader knows how to make the best decision for the group by taking into consideration all ideas and perspectives. I think I have always thought this was important, but now through my experiences I know and have seen how important this truly is. Since I am very task-oriented, I often want to get work done and tasks accomplished, but do not always wait for the best possible decision or idea to develop. This is extremely important in administration as the staff in the school are looking to you to make the best decision for the the students and school as a whole. It is important to think through how you want to present information or ideas to staff, deal with a student, or interact with parents in order to create buy in into your beliefs, ideas, and methods as an administrator. I believe this is a key part of developing into an effective leader and I look forward to keep challenging myself to do so.