Week 4, EDLD 5399

Describe why reflection is an important skill in leadership.

Reflection is extremely critical for leaders, or anyone trying to improve his/her craft for that matter, because without it desired outcomes would not change. The definition of insanity comes to mind, doing the same thing over and over while expecting different results is an insane mindset. In education today there may be more than one answer. The best answer to any given situation probably depends on the specific variables involved and on the skill and experience of the educational leader working through the situation. I do not think that perfection is expected of educational leaders all the time but they should be learning from their past experiences and reflect upon them when presented with similar facts and situations. As educational leaders are presented with similar facts they can reflect upon their past experiences and adjust their decision to best fit the present situation.

Provide examples of reflective practices throughout this program citing examples from:

·         Course assignment activities

EDLD53996 - This introductory course was extremely challenging in the presentation of all the activities and assignments. Having to create a blog and a wiki were challenges for me as an immigrant to the digital era. However as I reflect back on the experience I am thankful that I struggled through and gained the experiences that I did. I am not even close to being proficient but I have a knowledge base from which I can build.

EDLD5371 – One of the most memorable assignment activities was the community relations presentation that I worked on for a couple weeks. I remember not being completely satisfied with the end result but as I reflect back on the experience and remember all the work I put into gathering information I am seeing benefit beyond the assignment itself. I reached out to several campuses, the district public information officer, the deputy superintendent and the superintendent. The conversations we had were productive but the benefit are reaching beyond the community relation assignment. As far as building a strong community relations program I think the best approach is to keep the final vision in mind while striving to improve the partnership.

EDLD5342 – School finance is still a daunting area of school operations that intimidates. I think that the intimidation is due to a lack of experience. I have been exposed to large amounts of information, explored several aspects, and have experience managing program budgets but there is something that still weighs heavy when I think about being responsible for a school district budget. I do feel after reflecting and having hallway conversations with executive directors and the CFO that goal-driven budgeting would an approach worth implementing across a district. The economy of scale term has helped me think about and better understand decisions that districts make when staffing and budgeting. I am still trying to wrap my head around how smaller schools and districts work through the economy of scale issue. What is the best budget practice recommendation for smaller organizations? With so many mandates and limited funds what is the best way to use available funds? The sources of revenue for school districts were informative. As I reflect on the lessons learned from the school finance course I feel dangerous. I have increased my lexicon and I can understand CFO talk. After several discussions with various leaders in school districts over the last few months I have realized that I do have to be a master of school finance, I only have to be knowledgeable and let the business office personnel do the school finance technical work.

EDLD5343 - School facilities are an aspect of school leadership that where I have a tremendous room for improvement. Prior to this course I thought facilities include building and maintenance.  Reflecting back on the course, I realize that there is so much more to school facilities. Demographic growth, bus patterns, and safety are all included in facility planning. The NCEF checklist activity really stretched my mind for the good and has expanded my facility knowledge. As I reflect on what I have learned from this course I realized that I now look at facilities differently. I look for maintenance, traffic patterns, bus drop-off and pick-up, demographic growth and safety.

EDLD 5387 – The seminar course was broad in scope but offered plenty of opportunities for reflection during and even after the course. When I interviewed the superintendent to discuss school board relations I was in new territory completely. I have not had interactions with the school board and the superintendent was one week on the job in my district. My new superintendent had great perspective on communicating with school board members especially in a proactive manner. As I think back on his message I can’t help thinking how this strategy must really pay off in the long run. The personnel component of this course was interesting as I have recently assumed the position as high school principal. I have had to hire several positions and wish I could replace a few people that are currently on the staff. When I interviewed the executive director of human resources in this course she actually mentioned incorporating a component into interview to get a better idea of the instructional quality of each applicant. As I reflect on her comments and especially as I am in the position of filling several positions she was on to something. I do not have a solution but I am constantly thinking about how to improve the interview process so that the best person for the position is ultimately the one that is recommended for the position. One of the most impactful assignments was the professional development plan. This plan was created on the back of reflection from current efforts and initiatives that have not produced the results desired. I reflected on results and procedures that did not work and as I created my proposal. I feel that my proposal has been widely accepted and is working but only because I valued the efforts of previous plans. Without reflecting on past professional development plans it would be extremely difficult to create an improved plan that would produce desired results.

EDLS 5399 – This capstone course has stimulated a great deal of reflection. I have been asked to work and think about several aspects of educational business over the last eight months. I have found myself knowing not the answer, but knowing where I need to go to find the answer. I attribute this knowledge to my experiences and assignments from this program. Working on assignments that ask me to identify which domain or competency can be associated with the specific task has actually helped me to better understand them in preparation for the TExES exam.

·         Blogs

The blogs have been a blessing and a curse. At the onset of the assignment I am usually not thrilled about posting a reflection too my blog. Once I actually completed the blog I found that having to construct text for the blog actually required me to extend my reflective thinking. By being forced to think back, reflect, over the weekly assignments I have actually created a habit. I now find myself thinking about the reflection during the activity. The blogging assignments have made me more accepting of thinking about my thinking especially during an activity. Reflection has become an embedded component of all of my activities.

 

·         Course and campus supervised logs

The course and campus supervised logs have been beneficial in promoting reflective thinking and practice. Completing the logs themselves is reflective but the conversations I have had with my supervisor has been the real benefit. Thinking alone has been productive but I have gotten much more from conversation with my supervisor. These conversations are like personal reflection on steroids. Thoughts are tossed back and forth and ideas challenged immediately. These conversations that are driven by the logs are productive and have actually been incorporated into my daily business on my campus. The immediate feedback and reflective conversation is a great tool for generating solutions quickly.

 

·         Assessments

The assessments themselves are not too enjoyable but the physical activity requires reflective thinking. As I would work through the assessments I knew that if I wasn’t familiar with the material that I would struggle. In an effort to prevent this frustration and to perform at a high level I would review all the material required for the assessment prior to the assessment. Once the assessment began I was familiar with all the material and able to complete the assessment. I would have liked to get specific feedback relating to my assessments. My grade provided only limited comfort and because I was not perfect I would like to use reflection and learn from my mistakes but I have not had access to the specific questions that I missed.

 

 

·         Other intern reflection experiences

The Internship Plan has been a huge bundle of experiences. The activities in my plan have provided me with a plethora of reflective experiences. For each activity I would conduct the physical components and then reflect on the experience for the journaling aspect of the assignment. An unexpected benefit has been when I open my journal to input another entry and as move through the pages I find myself reading past entries and thinking about them, after the fact. This Internship journal has been a powerful collection of reflection.

 

Describe how you plan to use reflective practice to improve your leadership skills – provide some specific suggestions for applying the skills of reflection.

The obvious use of reflective practice on my leadership skills is not to replicate mistakes from the past. I have had conversations with every department leader in the district and then some. I have discussed policy, practice, and theory. These conversations have been educational. I feel that the experiences I have gained will help me to be a better leader. As an aspiring person and leader I will be keeping a journal. The journal I kept logging my internship activities has been a great lesson keeper. By recording what I experienced and then coming back and adding reflective comments I found that I was able to capture things I would have otherwise forgotten. These lessons learned will and have been beneficial to me in how I deal with situations that arise on my campus. As an aspiring superintendent and by incorporating this reflective journaling into my daily business I will be better prepared to deal with all things school related and much more reflective in nature. In an earlier course a term I heard was experiential learning. Basically, we learn from experiences and then we react accordingly the next time we are found in a similar situation. Reflective journaling and experiential learning will help me to be a more effective leader. I am also going to have short reflective administrative meetings three mornings a week with my campus assistant principals. Asking them to reflect on yesterday’s events and then to offer up solutions will be routine (experiential learning). As campus leaders we are always learning. Conversation is a powerful tool for leveraging reflection. I plan on having conversations with students, teachers, faculty and staff on a regular, impromptu basis. One way to get a pulse of what is going on is to get out of my office and ask. These conversations, in person, will serve a couple purposes. One, they will show people that I am human and do care. Some leaders are too busy for the people with paperwork, seems backward.  Second, the topics of the conversation will be noted in my journal and shared in the morning meetings with my assistant administrators. With this group of aspiring leaders we will reflect on our past experiences and propose solutions. A leader will become history if reflection is not overlooked. I plan on improving my leadership skills by incorporating reflective journaling, reflective meetings with my staff and having reflective conversations with all stakeholders.