While each model of
distributed leadership had clear differences, they all seemed to base their
ideas on the premise that leadership can take place within a variety of
contexts and are not limited to just one specific person or role. This is also true of my experiences in a
school setting. I related most to Ogawa,
Pounder, and colleagues' model of leadership as an organization-wide resource
of power and influence. There are
various types of leadership within our building and my district, each which
comes with its own set of power and influence.
While certainly administration holds a significant amount of power and
often times influence as well, certain teachers in our building share and equal
amount of influence, especially with other colleagues and with parents.
I also related to
this model's criteria for effective organizations, particularly being able to
control relationships within an environment and building a sense of commitment
amongst staff. Without these two things,
I don't know if one could consider themselves a leader in the building at all,
regardless of position or authority. I
believe this is why we often see administration struggle to get teachers
"on board" with various visions or missions of the building- because
they haven't first instilled a sense of commitment and aren't stakeholders
themselves of the relationships within the building.
Fortunately, I
currently have amazing administrators who invest in their staff and trust them
to take on various leadership roles or involve staff members in completing
administrative tasks to see input. This
is where I also related with Firestone's task-oriented model. There are many tasks that need to be done
throughout the school year, and while a teacher may not have a specific named
leadership roles within the building, usually teachers that have more
responsibility are viewed more as leaders than others. Also when considering this model, I thought
the seven ways to break up leadership tasks were unique. Among the tasks listed, I realized that
almost all of those items would fall under either our principal or assistant
principal. It would be interesting to
see our building run under a similar model, and how that would shift some of
our leaders within the building.
When considering
professional learning, our building often relies on experts in the field or
instructional coaches/TOSA's to provide much of our professional
development. Within the past year or so,
however, we have begun allowing teachers to be the experts of their own craft
and open up their rooms to various professional development sessions. I think this is where the best learning can
happen as an educator. I appreciated the
reflective question about social justice, as that is intensive but extremely
important work that needs to happen both as a district and within a
building. The Issaquah School District
has committed years of their whole district PD to social justice issues and
also has paid for experts in the field to conduct repeated work with each
building. It is important when considering
aspects of social justice that there is a lot of personal work that needs to be
done by leaders themselves before they can bring along staff members on their
journey. This is a great instance to use
the diversity you have in your building and pull out "leaders" that
haven't previously been named.
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