Great Teachers don't make Great Leaders

The problem with leadership in Education is that often the leaders are leaders because they are good educators/teachers NOT necessarily GREAT leaders. This is a truism across all fields. An individual who excels IN a field does not equate a Great Leader OF that field.

I think a bit about the leadership structure and expectations that I'm currently in (UNDERSTATEMENT). OK, I'm always thinking about the leadership situation and about how we can be better. We're doing pretty well as a school but we ALWAYS can be better.

One of the major points that arises time and time again in my observations and assessments is that there is this broken logic that GREAT teachers make GREAT leaders.

Now I'm not saying that you can't be a great teacher AND a great leader. I just think that it is a fallacy to think that both are in lockstep with one another.

This is a core problem of educational leadership, especially when you promote from within - which is important. When you look at candidates on your staff you often judge them by what they are currently are doing - teaching - to project their success as a leader. Wrong.

While it certainly helps in the respect department to be pretty good at what you are going to lead people in doing, it just is not that important on the whole.

We need to start to understand that leadership requires important, unique skills that cut across disciplines. Universities really shouldn't have an 'Intro to Educational Leadership' class until they have done an 'Intro to Leadership' class. Do you think that the teachings of John Wooden, Winston Churchill, or Marcus Aurelius have no application to my work as a Leader in an education setting? Nowhere in any of the readings for 'Intro to Ed Leadership' courses are we analyzing leadership in its truest and most successful form.

Seeing education as some entirely unique world where we have rules unto ourselves is what is problematic. Finding the threads which connect successful leadership in business, politics, military, sport, and education are easy. Shouldn't we then gravitate to the best examples of leadership rather than limit ourselves to those which occur in an educational context?

In my next post I'll talk about the most important error leaders make time and time again in my experience as an educator.

CAV

Daily Update - 26/5

Thursdays are a killer for me. I have a whole lot happening. I'm either in meetings or classes all day. This means everything gets put to the side and I need to stay on my feet. Today I dipped into the coffee fund and spoiled myself at lunch to push me through the last two periods.

WHAT WENT WELL:
I am loving the projects that I have going on in my Geography classes. It is GREAT to just let go of the class and see the students be productive. As well, I like digging into the digital tools of Google Maps and Google Docs (and so do the students). It really takes this project to another level in that the students are mining the web for good resources (another great lesson they are learning is deciding what info is of quality and what is not) and then taking that data and interpreting it on to a Google Map or creating a Chart in Spreadsheets that they load on their Google Site.

There is really something for everyone in the project. For the tech-minded boys they get to have fun playing around with customizing a map or their own website. For the boys who like to find the best sites, they get to dig deeper and deeper for that info. I love it when I hear a kid shout out, 'I just found the best website' and all the kids scurry over to his laptop to check it out.

These kids are also getting a TON of IT skills that will pay massive dividends for the future. I can only imagine how much they will be doing online when their time comes to join the work force. Now they'll be able to create a 'wiki' and 'embed' photos and info to create multimedia documents.

I also love the freedom I have to get to know my students. When I don't have to be the 'sage on the stage' holding court in front of my subjects, I can bounce around and give direct feedback to students and really get an understanding of how boys work and who they are. Also, I can give that real time feedback (which seems to always be positive).

I am continually amazed at how much the students enjoy the freedom of a project. There is a respect that you are giving your class by saying - 'Go for it.' Especially at my school, where we have many independent boys and amazing technology resources, it just seems so logical to be doing digital projects.

That being said, I just haven't put together how to do digital projects in English. In Geography, a subject I have no training in, I find it easier to do projects because it is so clear how they work. The boys are finding raw data and working to interpret that data into usable pieces (maps, graphs, ect) and then drawing conclusions based on their work. The better they work to interpret the data, the better their conclusions.

With English we are lacking this objecting 'data' to work from. The interpretation from the start is very subjective. Still, even as I write this, I am starting to get my head around how to do digital projects in English.

This is the way I work. I think about something. Go away from it. Think about it some more. Go away. Eventually it comes to me how it works. Then I get into the project and it starts to come together.

I love finally starting to feel like I have schemas to work from when planning lessons. It has taken me a while but I am starting to feel like a competent teacher. This is strongly related to Duckworth's notion of 'Grit'. The more I do the tasks which I'm not that great at, the better I get as teaching. For instance, keeping better records of what I'm doing in class. When I take the time to make a detailed plan, I can go back to it the next class or next year and make it better. This is exactly what has happened in my Y10 Geo class where their project is going off!!

CAV

My First Foray in to Digital Project-Based Learning

So teaching Geography has allowed me to make the transition into digital project-based learning this year (have a look).

In Year 10 we have a unit about Australia and its Regional and Global Links. This is my third year teaching this year group. My first year I came up with a unit which forced the students to work independently gathering info on the web with a powerpoint presentation at the end of the year. It didn't go that well. It was mostly fact-finding and lacking in any real 'work' by the students. I got back some uninspiring powerpoint presentations.

In the second year I made a big upgrade introducing the use of Google Maps and the website Stat Planet. Both these sections brought about a significant uptick in quality. Still, the project lacked that independent 'problem solving' element. This was much more about the allure of some flashy websites.

So this year I took it to the next level. Since all of my students are working on blogs (Blogger) they have a decent understanding of the bare basics of running a website. This got me thinking about how I could make this project 'digital'.

I have been doing a ton of work with my blog for this class but my ICT officer at school, who has been super impressed/supportive of the steps I've taken with my class, told me that I had to get on Google Sites. I've heard this before, had a play, and wasn't impressed. To me, Google Sites lack the intuitive nature of Blogger or Wordpress and didn't seem worth the extra complication.

Anyways, I had a play again after becoming quite handy with Blogger. This time I had a play with a specific intent to embed my class blog into the homepage. This is the hub of my class and I need it to be the focal point of my site. With this specific goal in mind I played around with some basic html scripts I figured out to embed Google Docs on my blog and finally got my website embeded into the homepage. (Turns out that there is a far simpler way to do this in the 'insert' function.)

Back to the project: So, in my effort to figure out Google Sites for my classes I realized that this is going to be PERFECT for my students' projects. They are going to create wiki's for all their work. (Here's my example for the class.)

Nice. This makes it more 'digital' but how was I going to make it include a 'real-world problem solving' element?

I decided that I was going to have all my students become 'spies in training'. This part of their training would require them to become adapt at gathering information and then becoming a expert on two countries Australia interacts with and then create an position statement as to how Australia should interact in the near and long-term future with an important regional neighbour.

This would require them to take all the information that they have gathered and then make an informed conclusion of their own.

One week in and so far, so good. The first two lessons have started slow but it is looking good.

Will keep you up dated.

Cav