Adrienne Mcelroy EDA 6192

Adrienne McElroy EDA 6192

Organizational Development

Artifact 7
Organizational Development

Chapter 8 and 9 Activities

Ø  This artifact was developed during a graduate level course, Organizational Development EDA 6192.

Ø  This graduate level coursework was completed at Florida Gulf Coast University in Spring 2006.

Ø  My role in producing the written paper was as graduate student completing required coursework.

Ø  I received positive feedback on this assignment.

Ø  This project addresses the following Florida Educational Leadership Standards:

X / Standard 1: Vision / The principal has a personal vision for the school and the knowledge, skills, and dispositions to develop, articulate and implement a shared vision that is supported by the larger organization and the school community.
Standard 2: Instructional Leadership / The principal promotes a positive learning culture, provides an effective instructional program and applies best practices to student learning, especially in the area of reading and other foundational skills.
Standard 3: Managing the Learning Environment / The principal manages the organization, operations, facilities and resources in ways that maximize the use of resources in an instructional organization and promotes a safe, efficient, legal, and effective learning environment.
Standard 4: Community and Stakeholder Partnerships / The principal collaborates with families, business, and community members, responds to diverse community interests and needs, works effectively within the larger organization and mobilizes community resources.
Standard 5: Decision Making Strategies / The principal plans effectively, uses critical thinking and problem solving techniques, and collects and analyzes data for continuous school improvement.
Standard 6: Diversity / The principal understands, responds to, and influences the personal, political, social, economic, legal, and cultural relationships in the classroom, the school, and the local community.
X / Standard 7: Technology / The principal plans and implements the integration of technological and electronic tools in teaching, learning, management, research and communication responsibilities.
Standard 8: Learning, Accountability, and Assessment / The principal monitors the success of all students in the learning environment, aligns the curriculum, instruction, and assessment process to promote effective student performance, and uses a variety of benchmarks, learning expectations, and feedback measures to ensure accountability for all participants engaged in the educational process
Standard 9: Human Resource Development / The principal recruits, selects, nurtures and where appropriate, retains effective personnel, develops mentor and partnership programs, and designs and implements comprehensive professional growth plans for all staff—paid and volunteer.
Standard 10: Ethical Leadership / The principal acts with integrity, fairness, and honesty in an ethical manner.

Ø  Reflective statement: I learned that leaders lead people and manage things and the role that leaders play in developing the school climate. This activity required me to analyze my own beliefs and how I would handle various situations. It is great to be able to analyze hypothetical experiences before they are no longer hypothetical.

Chapter 8

1 and 2. Three pieces of advice that I would offer Marion as the new principal of JFK would be:

·  Leaders lead people not manage people; however, leaders must be able to manage things. According to Gardner, there are many “things” that school leaders have to manage, such as: budgets, resources, and inventories. Leaders must lead people to do the right thing and always do the right thing themselves. Marion will need to create and communicate a vision for JFK that will inspire all of those that work there.

Ø  A specific kind of action Marion should consider is proper management of operational routines of the school. She should consider reading the book Quality Schools by William Glasser. This book offers suggestions on how to lead and not manage people. Specifically, she should avoid managing people’s actions especially with coercive techniques.

·  Leaders must relate to followers by motivating them, arousing a personal commitment, organizing the school environment, and facilitating the work of all on JFK’s shared vision.

Ø  Marion can collaborate with staff to reach goals that maximize the school’s vision. Also, she can provide help, support, and encouragement with solving problems. Specifically, she should avoid micromanaging classroom teachers’ lesson plans and grading methods.

·  Marion needs to know the general agreement on the definition of leadership. Leadership is a group function and only occurs when the school interacts with the leader, also when the leader seeks to influence the behavior of the school personnel through that interaction.

Ø  Social interactions play an important part in the school climate. A leader has to be willing to collaborate with others in order to be a successful leader. A leader cannot lead the powerless. We must share in the power that affects the entire school. The school is shared with many individuals whom the leader must interact with daily. This interaction is key to leading. Specifically, Marion should avoid commanding persons in her school. Synergy is more beneficial when leading. She must work towards a win-win situation.

Chapter 9

1. My response to the question Marion posed about the honeymoon period would have been the same as Sidney Bennigan’s views. Once you are appointed, people look at your moves, motives, and words differently. Their paradigm shifts about you as a person to you as a leader. Every action has a perception by those around you. Given the room full of teachers Marion was entering into I would not advise the “laying low” approach. Obviously they have gathered for a reason, which is to hear her articulate her own vision for the future and maybe not necessarily the vision for JFK but her personal views on leading. They want to hear her “game plan” or administrative platform. An alternative to “laying low” is Team Administration. Although this involves high levels of skill and training, it will be more beneficial to her leadership at JFK. Taking the team administration approach is less dictatorship yet more aggressive than laying low. She can work collaboratively with the teachers on goal-setting, decision-making, and problem-solving processes. With this approach, Marion would allow the staff to see that she is a team player seeking win-win situations for JFK and to uphold their current reputation. She needs to show them she is a leader not a manager.

2. A good form of planning and preparation by Marion for this unexpected opportunity that has arisen at JFK would be to develop the administrative platform, or more informally titled “Your Game Plan”, that we have completed in the Ed. Leadership program at FGCU. This is a reflective process that allows you to analyze and verbalize your beliefs that ultimately will impact your decisions. She should stay abreast on the latest research of leadership.

3. The strategies I think that are important in planning to assume a school principalship are realization about the job of principal. Marion has to realize the five propositions developed from Mintzberg’s observations. 1. She will do a great deal of work at an unrelenting pace. Ultimately, her personal life is going to change. She needs to make preparations for this change with her support system. 2. She will devote a brief period of time each day to a large number of decisions. Therefore, she needs to have a plan in place for decision making. Team administration with collaborative decision making can help her in this area. 3. Administrators prefer to deal with active problems. Therefore, routines have to be established from the beginning that way routine issues do not impact the administrator. 4. Verbal communication is preferred. Therefore, Marion needs to be verbal and practice public speaking. She should have prepared statements before entering a room. 5. Managers maintain working relationships with three principal groups: superiors, subordinates, and outsiders. Marion needs to be comfortable speaking to everyone regardless of perceptions or previous experiences. She has to be everything else aside and listen first to understand then to be understood.

1 7/10/2007