Connect and Work Together

I see my leadership journey as a marathon, not a sprint. My thoughts and actions are geared towards a long term goal but because of this fact I don't always give it the time it deserves. I am fortunate to have a colleague in the same building that has a similar goal but I feel like more is needed to keep me engaged and aware of my thoughts and actions and how they can be viewed through the lens of the Catholic Leadership Framework.

I have been thinking a lot lately about the people I know in my school board who are interested in formal leadership. I took some time today to think about why I haven't reached out to them to talk leadership and engage in discussions that can benefit all of us with respect to our work and development as leaders. This thought led to action as I contacted several colleagues and asked them if they wanted to participate in discussions around leadership by examining leadership literature (articles/readings), the use 21st Century tools to connect and grow our professional learning community, and examining our portfolios to prompt further discussion and growth.  

I believe that participating in this type of learning community can benefit my practice, the practice of my colleagues, and our school board by meeting the following Catholic Leadership Framework expectations:

• establish, in collaboration with staff and other stakeholders, a commitment to purpose and vision which is embedded in the Gospel and energizes our work
• help staff and diverse stakeholders understand the relationship between the school’s vision and board and provincial policy initiatives and priorities
• regularly encourage staff to evaluate their progress toward achieving the school’s goals (sipsa/bipsa)
• encourage staff to develop and periodically review individual goals for professional growth, as well as the relationship between their individual goals and the school’s goals (sipsa/bipsa)
• model collaboration in our work
• help staff (colleagues) make connections between school goals and ministry goals in order to strengthen commitment to school improvement efforts

The above expectations will provide us with a great start! I am excited to see what comes from our learning as we start our leadership learning experience.

What Do You Want Leaders to Do With Technology?

As the PQP2 course comes to an end, our 10 day challenge wraps up with a reflection on the following question: What do you want leaders to do with technology? As I reflect on this question, I can't help but connect the following Catholic Leadership Framework pillars:

• Setting Directions
• Building Relationships and Developing People
• Developing Organization to Support Desired Practices
• Improving the Instructional Program
• Securing Accountability

For me, technology has has allowed me to be more efficient, become a global citizen, connect with others to grow as an educator, and to reach students who seemed to be unreachable. Over the last 9 challenges I have enjoyed reflecting on how I use technology as a teacher, but more importantly, how it can be used as a leader.

I want leaders to use technology for the same reasons I stated above. We live in a time where digital is the norm. Mobile devices run rampant and access to the Internet is becoming a right rather than a privilege. Leaders need to have a general idea of what is out there and be open to how the technology can be used to assist all stakeholder in order to benefit the learning of the students entrusted in our care.

As the playing field levels out with respect to access to the Internet and relatively affordable technology, leaders who are connected and using social media to tell their stories and expand their professional learning network, for example, will be in a good position to model the ethical/effective use of technology to their students and community.

The world we live in today is much smaller than it used to be thanks to technology and the Internet. Leaders need to lead digitally as well as face-to-face. As I move into Day 11 and beyond, I believe that I will continue to use technology to grow as a professional and discover new ways to learn from others, share my learning, reach people who were once deemed unreachable, and find new ways to positively impact the the students under my care.

PQP2 - Formal Leadership Learning

I'm very excited to be enrolled in the Principal Qualification Program (part 2). I am surrounded by a great group of formal and informal leaders in my system and look forward to learning with them and from them. It is important for me to note that one of the main reasons I decided to take this course now is because of the instructor who will be leading our learning. I have had the opportunity to work with +Rodney Eckert when I worked under his supervision a few years ago. I find him to be an authentic and effective leader and enjoy listening to him and engaging him in educational discussions with him.

Rod Eckert

It will be nice to connect my learning in the course to the Catholic Leadership Framework, especially the pillars that I feel I need to work on. When I look at and reflect on the Leadership Framework I know that Securing Accountability is a pillar that I will need to spend time reviewing and learning about in this course. I am not naturally attracted to that section of the Framework so I know that I will need to put effort into learning more about it.

My Goals and Learning Through the Lens of the Catholic Leadership Framework

With Leadership Part 3 underway, I have been preparing for my first meeting with each of my mentors. We were given the opportunity to suggest names of administrators that we were interested in job shadowing. I knew that I wanted to shadow a relatively new VP and Principal. I also wanted to work with an administrator in a large school and one in a small to medium sized school. Fortunately, I have been assigned to the two administrators that I had asked to be paired with. I am excited to meet with them and to learn from them.

As I prepare for my initial meetings, I have been reflecting on my goals for this portion of the program. For my first meeting with my mentors, I have been thinking about my goals and my plan for continuous learning, growth, and improvement. Through the lens of the Catholic Leadership Framework, I am provided with direction on what I would like to learn more about and be exposed to. I'm also working through the idea of having certain goals with each administrator so that I can allow them to go deep in a particular area. 

Here is what I have so far in terms of my goals/learning around the Leadership Framework:

Improving the Instructional Program

• Buffering staff from distractions to their work
• Catholic school leaders: create and enforce consistent, school-wide discipline policies 
• minimize daily disruptions to classroom instructional time 
• implement a systematic procedure for deciding how best to respond to initiatives from outside the school 
• develop, with staff, guidelines to govern the amount of time teachers spend on non-instructional and out-of-school activities
• regularly assess the contribution of all out-of-classroom activities to the learning priorities of students 

Essentially, my goal around improving the instructional program is to learn how my mentors deal with the possible "distractions" to their staff/school. I have an idea but I want to see/hear what their best practice might be.

Securing Accountability

• Building staff members’ sense of internal accountability Catholic school leaders
• regularly engage staff in analyzing data on the learning progress of all students
• insist on the use of data that is of high quality (reliable, valid, collected using systematic collection processes, available in its original form, and has been subjected to collaborative interpretation
• promote collective responsibility and accountability for student achievement and well-being
• help staff make connections between school goals and ministry goals in order to strengthen commitment to school improvement efforts
• assess their own contributions to school achievements and take into account feedback from others on their performance
• participate actively in their own performance appraisal and make adjustments to better meet expectations and goals
• ensure ongoing adult faith formation that addresses internal faith development  

• Meeting the demands for external accountability Catholic school leaders
• clearly define accountability for individual staff in terms that are mutually understood and agreed to and that can be rigorously reviewed and evaluated
• measure and monitor teacher and leader effectiveness using data about changes in student achievement
• align school goals with board and provincial goals
• provide an accurate and transparent account of the school’s performance to all school stakeholders (e.g., ministry, board, parents, and the Catholic community)
• create an organizational structure that reflects the Catholic school’s values and enables management systems, structures and processes to work effectively within Catholic teachings and legal requirements

With respect to securing accountability, I am quite interested in learning more about how to build staff members sense of internal accountability. This is a big one for me so I really want to push myself to learn more about it and what my mentors perspective is on it. Moreover, meeting the demands for external accountability is also a big one for me and seems challenging, but from an entirely different perspective. 

I feel like I have a great starting point with respect to my initial learning goals that connect directly with the Leadership Framework. I also have some questions I would like to pose to my mentors that are more of a personal nature. They involve such things as work-family balance, hard conversations, and the ability to be flexible and open to whatever comes their way as leaders in schools. 

I'm sure I could find formal expectations in the Leadership Framework to address the topics I just mentioned, but for now, I'm going to keep things as they are. I will take time to reflect on what I have written today and be open to what comes my way when I connect with my mentors.

Tough Conversations

I recently reflected on conflict and ideas on how to whether its ill effects. By no means am I anywhere near comfortable with conflict, but I think that awareness provides me with an opportunity to learn more about what I can do to deal with it effectively when it pops up.

Our last leadership session focused on having hard coaching conversations - which can come from or lead to conflict. It's a heavy duty topic in my opinion but an important one to address and discuss. One of the first things that was established was a point of view that can provide clarity and comfort around having tough conversations. If tough conversations are perceived as opportunities to foster growth and develop cognitive capacity then who wouldn't want to engage in such practices? The trick to all of this (if I can call it that) is/are the relationships we have with our colleagues and our students. A good relationship will certainly allow for a tough conversation to be interpreted as a caring or 'tough love' conversation that is meant to assist. A weak relationship leaves people feeling defensive and hurt. Again, we are reminded that building positive relationships is a key ingredient to any of our pursuits in life.

The key learning I take away from this portion of the leadership program revolves around what are referred to as "Tools for Coaching" - four ingredients (purpose, presence, rapport, pausing-paraphrasing) that can assist with hard conversations by reminding us that 1) all people have dignity and giftedness that allow them to make valuable contributions to their community; 2) we are made to exist in relationship with one another and that relationships require learning and growth; 3) institutions should serve people and not the other way around; and 4) lasting change comes from encouraging growth in others.

With this new learning we were encouraged to seek out opportunities to practice the skills, notice the how our interactions begin to change, refine our skills based on our reflections, and extend our skills.

Through the lens of the Catholic Leadership Framework, the following expectations stand out to me as I engage in building trusting relationships where tough conversations would be perceived as beneficial rather than harmful:

• encourage staff to be innovative in helping students meet expectations (setting directions)
• acknowledge and celebrate the accomplishments of individuals and teams (building relationships and developing people) 
• build upon and respond to individual staff members’ unique needs and expertise (building relationships and developing people) 
• foster mutual respect and trust among those involved in collaboration (developing the organization to support desired practices)
• encourage the collaborative development of group processes and outcomes (developing the organization to support desired practices)
• provide advice to teachers about how to solve classroom problems by supporting a solution-focused learning environment based on Catholic values (improving the instructional program)
• assess their own contributions to school achievements and take into account feedback from others on their performance (securing accountability)

The "Tools for Coaching" and the above mentioned expectations have been at the forefront of many of my interactions with my close colleagues. There have been some tough conversations - initiated by me and initiated by others towards me. I have found that having an understanding and awareness around this topic to be quite valuable. Combined with good working relationships, there is a lot of growth that seems to be benefiting everyone involved.

I have also been involved in difficult interactions where I didn't feel valued as a colleague. In those circumstances I initially felt upset and defensive. I found myself engaged in self talk about what I could do to lessen the ill effects of a tough conversation where  rapport and presence did not seem to be part of the equation. Interestingly enough, I found myself falling back on the habits of a servant and how I could salvage the situation. Luckily, I haven't found myself in too many of these situations but I have spent time reflecting on them and the positive that I could extract from them.