Saturday, January 14, 2012
Share and Share Alike
At a school, the principal has to feel confident enough to release the controls and allow members of the staff to focus on areas of expertise and strength.
There are lots of terms related to distributing.
It is not a secret that I have little understanding of the monarchical system of leadership at my school.
On the surface it looks as if there is a distribution of power but there isn't. There is one-way communication that informs the "subjects" of the demands. There is no flexibility.
If distributed leadership was used at my current school, student achievement would never come into question. In July, a new director of curriculum and instruction, a literacy coordinator, and I, the EL Specialist, were hired. In a distributive leadership model, each of us would still report to the head of school however, we would have targeted areas of supervision. We could even model and practice distributive leadership among the people we supervise. Under this model we could ensure that teachers would receive the appropriate level of support, as opposed to what happens now... no one is provided with support, professional development, or capacity building appropriate to their experience and knowledge level.
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Distributing the right amount of leadership is important. Also, if we are distributing a large task to be done, we should designate adequate assistance to go along with it. I like your visual aids especially the top one showing other terms for distribute.
ReplyDeleteThere is nothing more tough than having team members that would work well in the distributive model but not having the ability to do so. It is frustrating to have the vision and the team members with ability but not to have the go-ahead from the principal or administration. I commend you for sticking with this school. Perhaps at some point the current leader will move on and you and the literacy coordinator can become a more distributive team.
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