Marc Shelton
President, NCPEA
George Fox University
A New Year to
Re-flect, Re-think, and Re-conceptualize How We Prepare School Leaders
If you are like me, you have been pulled kicking and
screaming from the last days of summer to preparing or perhaps even beginning
to teach courses this week. This is the
stuff of life that we know as professors of educational administration – preparing
for the important work of our profession mixed with the events of our personal
lives attending to day-to-day realities of being fully human. Within the past month many of us within NCPEA
busily moved from teaching summer school sessions, where we work hard and smart
to prepare future leaders, to attend to our personal learning and development
in the Meadowlands of New Jersey. There
we corporately convened our 67th annual conference led by the NCPEA president
Carol Mullen and graciously hosted by a team of professors led by Drs. Gerry
Babo and Don Leake through the state affiliate of NJ-NCPEA.
This summer on the East Coast we listened together to hear
perspectives on the important work we do, to share stories of what is working
in our classrooms, to present the results of our research, and to be challenged
to lead our profession into the future through writing, teaching, speaking, and
serving. We were refreshed during
conversations with friends and seeing the sites of New York City, and blessed
by taking some time to remember those who are no longer working among us, who led
by action in taking time away from their work schedules of preparing school
leaders to invest in the future of this active and vibrant community of
professors of educational administration.
And now we are back to the work that comes with a new academic year – so
welcome to the continuous cycle of working, reflecting, refreshing, and returning
to our work to innovate, invent, and imagine – again.
We also heard about the progress we are making as an
organization in the area of publications – progress to promote the knowledge
base for leadership within schools in the United States and the world. Ted Creighton and Brad Bizzell, NCPEA
publications directors, presented samples of significant work from our
professor-members. Jim Berry, executive
director, posed criteria for making crucial decisions that face the executive
board this year – the “how and how much” approach to determine investments of
time and money to strategically grow our role as a publisher within the field
of educational administration.
One such project was the publication of an NCPEA position
paper arguing for an interrelated approach to teacher leadership, which was
presented by Dr. Berry to the National Policy Board for Educational Administration
(NPBEA) in the fall of 2012.
Specifically, to implement this concept requires rethinking how we
prepare school leaders and modeling collaboration among faculty in higher
education and between universities and the schools for which we prepare
leaders. The executive board approved
using this September Talking Point space to pose some questions about how we
design educational administration curriculum and instruction to expand the
perception and preparation of teacher leaders.
Listening to your answers is important to our next step in shaping the
national conversation and aggressively implementing our NCPEA action plan to
strengthen teacher leadership.
Please take some time to think about and reply to the
following prompts to help formulate the eventual NCPEA policy brief that is
scheduled for publication this fall.
Blessings to you as you embark on the journey of your new academic year!
The report may be viewed by clicking on this link: NCPEA Position Paper – Developing a National Perspective of Interrelated Preparation: Educational Administration Leading Teacher Leadership Programs
NCPEA members, we invite you to respond
to the following questions in this blog and to add any additional questions or
comments.
Thoughts to Prompt Your Thinking:
·
Leadership matters in schools, so we need to be
aggressive in how we prepare school leaders
·
“Not to say we do it better, but to show we do
it differently” – with an effective humility
·
Considering a thought, both expressed by Nel
Noddings’ Keynote and in Jim Cibulka’s Cocking Lecture (click here for slides), we need to prepare
leaders who are willing and able to navigate politics to aggressively advocate for
and influence decisions to develop sound policy that promote educators and our
profession to better serve children and families.
The NCPEA distinctive in
preparing school leaders (NOTE: The majority of school leaders working
within schools today are prepared in programs where our NCPEA professor-members
work)
– Collaborative,
democratic, participatory & personal approach to preparing school leaders
– Bigger
vision for how & why we are preparing teacher leaders with rigor and
relevance
– NCPEA
professors speak, write & teach
·
Why should we
lead from within our Ed. Admin. programs in preparing teaching leaders?
·
What are
your program’s vision and ideas for preparing school leaders? And how will
school leadership change if your program’s ideas are implemented?
·
How do
you present a larger perspective of leadership, specifically teacher
leadership, in your program?
·
What
knowledge & skills differ from what is learned from educational
administration and from teacher education perspectives?
·
Provide
some examples of collaboration within your college or university to prepare
effective teacher leaders?
·
Provide
some examples of collaboration among your P-12 school partners to prepare
effective teacher leaders?
·
Thank
you!
