Ed. Tech. 596
With the onset of the information revolution, teachers, parents, and administrators are confronted with shifting paradigms in order to prepare their students for the 21st Century. Everyone including the students is confronted with a new leadership style called efficacy. Leadership ultimately has to come from within the person. Never before have we had the challenge of teaching this type of leadership in the schools. In fact schools have been a place where you came to learn certain information like how to read and write and facts about history, science, math etc. Now school is becoming a place where it is not only the basics but to survive in a complicated world skills like critical thinking, working in cooperative groups, higher order thinking skills such as evaluation, analysis, and synthesis are becoming important. It has been said that students might have as many as eleven different careers in their lifetimes. How do we prepare students for this type of challenge? Other qualities enter into the picture - how to teach perspective, values, flexibility, acceptance, and the ability to change quickly.
I feel that the curriculum of the schools has to be altered in order to accommodate these qualities. Standards have to be set so the students can master the challenges that they will face in their lifetime.
How do we get schools to incorporate technology? How do we get schools to change the curriculum? How do we instill efficacy in students?
We have to redefine what school is - what type of learning organization is it? What kind of students do we want to have or produce? The type of leader the school has is vital. "Leaders can influence people to view reality at four distinct levels: events, patterns of behavior, systemic structures, and a purpose story. Leaders in learning organizations pay attention to all four levels, but focus predominately on purpose and systemic structure. Moreover, they teach people in their organization to do likewise." The Total Quality Management is just exactly what this is all about. Does it pertain to schools? I think so and if we don't reorganize our schools, our students will be the ones to suffer. We must have a purpose beyond reading and writing and basic content standards. Students need to feel connected and interconnected with all the information to a purpose for their lives. Their relationship to the reality of their world needs to be clarified and connected. A passion for life-long learning can be instilled in every student through the curriculum and instruction. We all need time to reflect and absorb the information that is being bombarded at us.
"Donald Schon, in his book THE REFLECTIVE PRACTITIONER, points out that the drive for instant action appears to come from public school classroom learning, where teachers are bound by a bureaucratic organization that discourages time to reflect. In Japan if a person is sitting quietly, no one will come and interrupt. It is assumed that the person is thinking. On the other hand, when the person is up and moving about, coworkers feel free to interrupt. In America, we assume that when a person is sitting quietly they aren't doing anything really important. The really important question here, I believe, is how can we expect people to learn when they have little time to think, and reflect both individually and collaboratively?" Another important question: Could this be a cultural norm that we take for granted- the incessant " busyness" of our daily lives?
Learning takes time. When an individual is managing mental models, for example, it takes time to surface assumption, examine their consistency and accuracy, and see how different models can be knit together into more systemic perspectives on important problems. The way each of us and each of our close colleagues go about managing our own time will say a good deal about our commitment to learning.
It seems very apparent that teachers need more planning time in order to incorporate technology into the curriculum. The reason is that much of the current curriculum needs to be rewritten. Especially if the teachers are going to use the Internet as a resource. When the Windows Charter School started last year, one day a week was set aside for curriculum planning for the teachers. Students would do an internship or community service on the same day. This type of schedule has worked out great for the teachers as well as the students. The Windows school is a Jr. High School but this idea could also be used for a High School. An elementary school might have to come up with another way to create planning time, but the teachers need it at all levels if technology is going to be meaningful for the students as well as the rest of the curriculum. If teachers are too stressed out, they cannot teach effectively. I think it is totally irrational for schools to keep expecting teachers to do more without adequate planning time and staff development.
To shift the paradigm of education to a process of life-long learning and individual creative leadership, takes time also. We can no longer overlook and not develop the efficacy of each student. I like Chris Dede concept of leadership - " Real leaders discourage followers, instead encouraging use of their visions as a foundation for other, better insights. True solutions to problems are always based on ideas from multiple perspectives; no individual, however capable, can incorporate the full range of knowledge and experience needed to invent an educational system that fulfills the diverse needs of a diverse community."
Everyone needs not only to develop their leadership skills, but also their sense of teamwork and a feeling of purpose and connectedness for what they are doing. Phil Jackson described his leadership of the world champion Chicago Bulls in a way that applies to the type of school leadership that I increasingly value: "Most leaders tend to view teamwork a social engineering problem: Take x group, add y motivational technique, and get z result. But working with the Bulls, I've learned that the most effective way to forge a winning team is to call on the players need to connect with something larger than themselves. For those who don't consider themselves spiritual in a conventional sense, creating a successful team - whether it's an NBA champion or a record-setting sales force - is essentially a spiritual act. It requires the individuals involved to surrender their self-interest for the greater good so that the whole adds up to more than the sum of its parts."
"Research has proven already that the benefits of good technology leadership can include:
The ultimate thrust is now up to the schools, how creative and purposefully connected can you turn your learning organization into a special place to prepare students for the 21st Century. Maybe we need to look ahead a few more years than even five since the students will be with us for at least 16 years. Ian Jukes has some great statistics related to technology that can be accessed through his web site: http://www.tcpd.org. He related in a recent talk to the San Diego Henry Cluster that change is about headware not software or hardware. He related that sardines change direction of their school one at a time and it only takes a few to change the entire direction of their school ( implying that we can at least be as mighty as a sardine and still have an important effect in relation to change).Mr. Jukes emphasized that the schools are our farms of the future, we have to stand back and access where we are going and how we are going to get there as well as for what purpose. He quoted Yogi Berra "If you don't know where your going, you'll probably end up some place else."
As a future administrator, I feel that the most important thing is to make sure the curriculum is aligned to the vision of the school and community. The vision and curriculum must reflect the data of the school. Technology needs to be integrated into the curriculum as well as leadership qualities that stress efficacy. This new revised curriculum needs to be aligned with the local, state and national standards. I feel that the teaching techniques should be based on effective research. And it is important for the principal to do daily walk-thrus in order to understand what is being taught, and what effective teaching techniques are being used. The assessments used need to be frequent and aligned to the curriculum content. The use of portfolios is great and hopefully will be electronic in a few years, so that the progress of the students can be easily viewed from several viewpoints.
With effective leadership - the curriculum can be changed. Technology can be incorporated into the curriculum, leadership skills, and the efficacy of inner leadership skills can also be incorporated into the curriculum. New curriculum demands reflection, action, alignment, and assessments. Students can be prepared for the 21st Century.
The Fifth Discipline, The Art and Practice of Learning Organizations: Peter Senge, Chapter 18 page 353.
The Fifth Discipline, The Art and Practice of Learning Organizations: Peter Senge, Chapter 15 page 303.
EDUCATIONAL TECHNOLOGY LEADERSHIP PERSPECTIVES, Greg Kearsley & William Lynch: Chapter 2/ Leadership Without Followers by Christopher J. Dede page 27.
Thrust For Educational Leadership , A.C.S.D., Nov. Dec. 1997, Why Phil Jackson gets to coach Micheal Jordan by Walt L. Buster page 26.
EDUCATIONAL TECHNOLOGY LEADERSHIP PERSPECTIVES, Greg Kearsley & William Lynch: Chapter 2, page10.
Ian Jukes, Associate Director for the Thornburg Center for Professional Development in San Carlos, California. Creator and co-developer of Tech Works, a comprehensive K through 9 program designed to integrate technology skills across the curriculum.