The following principles are from the book, Leadership
for Differentiating Schools and Classrooms, by Tomlinson
and Allan. These are principles that the authors selected
that are necessary for change in schools. This issue includes
the last 5 principles.
PRINCIPLE 5: Systemic Change Requires Both Leadership
and Administration.
In instances where positive change shave taken root and
flourished in school districts (and in schools), dream
keepers and managers- both leaders and administrators-
have generally been essential to the change. The same
individual may play the two roles in part or in whole,
but the two roles are quite different . Each is essential.
Leadership for innovation requires a person with a vision
and the capacity to extend it to others.
Administration for change plays a management role.
PRINCIPLE 6: To Change Schools, We Must Change The
Culture Of Schools.
If only we could provide staff development that links
closely to the classroom, teaching practices would change
, and schools would evolve as classrooms changed.Studies
of school change suggest that this assumption is faulty.
We have deeply entrenched ways of thinking about learners
and learning, deeply embedded ways of doing school.Schools
are cultures governed by norms, traditions, and mores.
From concrete images of how classrooms should be arranged
to more abstract issues of how we think about student
success and failure, how we do school is as much a part
of our life maps as how we celebrate a given holiday.
Further, each educator brings into the profession beliefs
about children, about the roles of adults in children's
lives, about fairness and justice, and about various economic
and ethnic groups. These beliefs, too, are part of our
culture as individuals and educators. We may or may not
be conscious of the attitudes, beliefs, and habits that
permeate how we think about and practice our profession,
but their influence is profound.
PRINCIPLE 7: What Leaders Do Speaks With Greater Force
Than What They Say.
Effective leaders understand that they are in the environment-building
business. Change that occurs does so against the odds.
Critical to beating the odds is establishing tan environment
that balances the necessity for change with an atmosphere
that supports change. Further, an educational leader is
a mirror of a larger culture that is reflected in the
classroom. In other words, as leaders, we ought not do
what we would not want teachers to do in their classrooms.
PRINCIPLE 8: Change Efforts Need to Link with a Wider
World.
Leaders for change understand that efforts to promote
change cannot stop at the schoolhouse doors. Folks beyond
those doors need instruction from those of us whose professional
lives are lived in school- and to teach us as well. Effective
leaders accomplish the former by helping parents and community
members understand and develop confidence in the vision
of more productive classrooms- by helping parents and
community members develop an evolving sense of the possibilities
of schools. Such leaders accomplish the latter by ensuring
that parents and community members help schools understand
students better through ÒseeingÓ them in
their communities and homes.
Involving community calls for a sense of balance in leaders.
Parents and community members have agendas for schools
. Sensitive leaders hear and incorporate the agenda-but
often in ways that extend beyond the particulars- find
and seize upon common visions and yet extend the horizons
of possibility.
PRINCIPLE 9 :Leaders for Change Have a Result - Based
Orientation.
Just as effective teachers continually monitor the progress
of learners in a variety of ways and adapt instruction
appropriately based on their assessments, effective leaders
for change constantly look for both formal and informal
indicators of growth and progress in the area of change.
We have two American flags always: one for the rich and
one for the poor. When the rich fly it, it means that
things are under control; when the poor fly it, it means
danger, revolution, anarchy.
Henry Miller
Poetry Corner
WHAT DID YOU THINK?
That you'd get older, old enough
to make sense of things
that never made sense before,
clarity, a sort of reward
for living this long, the recompense for making so many
mistakes?
Did you think you'd stop walking away
from what should be faced and facing what you should walk
away from?
Did you hope for, if not wisdom,
at least patience, if not a highway, at least a trail
you could follow?
Did you think the rain would fall
more understandingly on your face,
the wind let you off the hook,
a fish that'd fought so long
it deserved to sleep now
at the pond's bottom?
Did you hope to be so old
you'd have worn the world
out, won from it begrudging acceptance,
to live in this body so long you'd stop
yearning for what it couldn't give,
your mind less greedy?
That you'd tire of worry, terror?
Did you think you deserved better? Better than what? The
trees?
The stones? The dried-up creek?
Did you think you'd be better prepared for what was to
come?
Think again.
Chris Bursk
