Final Presentation for Summative course

Humanist approaches to Education Post 4

Dr. David Jardine presentation in Advanced Methodologies in Literacy

The Sleep of Reason Brings Forth Monsters

Our Advanced Methodologies in Literacy class had very interesting presentation by retired professor Dr. David Jardine. The concept of Autoethnography resonated most with me  since it harkened back concepts mentioned in Dr. Enn's course on Educational Research Methodology when we explored aboriginal research methods with the Shawn Wilson book Research is Ceremony
https://fernwoodpublishing.ca/book/research-is-ceremony-shawn-wilson 
Also heuristics was a interesting topic Dr. Jardine discussed but we did not discuss it much.
Currently looking for the link to his presentation to post here:

Humanist approaches to Education Post 3

Ideas and  Reflections: Introduction to Counselling 3

The main points that have had impact on me from my third counselling session :

As per each weekend session, beginning the day with a meditation exercise sets a great learning mood for me. I still prefer the ‘leaves in a stream’ mediation and have now taken to putting each thought on over-sized rain drop. The rain sounds I have always enjoyed for the white-noise, so it is natural progression to go from this soothing sound to incorporating it in a meditative practice. I have several downloaded Youtube videos of rain without music that I use, but there is a site that is also very good: https://rain.simplynoise.com/ . I will practice this daily to set an example for my kids. Hopefully they will join me. I have also started the CBT prescribed lessons for angering as outlined in the Thoughts and Feelings book. This course has set me on a path of self-discovery and correction that I have been seeking but never able to quite focus in on. I was going to take the the MBSR sessions at Brandon University but I figured my two daughters had a direr need. The first session they were railing against the wholes situation in txt. When Angela and I ignored these invectives, they stopped. Once they arrived home at 10 they both admitted that this process could be healing and restorative if they give it a chance. This was a great relief to me.

The biggest learning experience I had this weekend is where I learned not to be complacent about my helping skills, during our practice sessions for goal-setting. I believe that I was not prepared mentally as there was a sort of disconnect from the previous sessions. I imitated to my session partner ( Cindy S), that I felt I would have done better the skills practice, had I had the momentum from the last weekends’ sessions. Also it may have been the familiarity with the person who played the client, which lead me to rush through the first stages of counselling to get to the main goal-setting section, which I felt was the main objective of the days role-playing session.  Even though I knew we had 20 -30 minutes, my main focus was to get to the practice in the goal-setting stage of helping a client. Coupled this with the fact that I was studying activity scheduling, the first stage of cognitive behavioural therapy for depression in the Thoughts and Feeling book, and that I had a client who was depressing, I immediately started into a long-winded, advice laden pontification on the benefits of this method to help the client get mobilized. I didn’t let the client prioritize her problems or help her construct a mutually agreed upon plan since I did not follow the prescribed ‘boiling down the problem’ script. These factors were a major stumbling blocks to being an effective listener that day. Perhaps, for me anyway, if I had gotten to do a section of goal-setting right after what we practiced in the session 2 weekend, I might have not flubbed so badly. The situation was like I was on a train that was derailing and I couldn’t get off; so I continued along in a self-conscious, rambling, manner until both Cindy and I started to debrief in order for me to save face. Thankfully the Prof was quite supportive, knowing that we are all on a continuum of learning to be better helpers.

I found it interesting that we were told that using formal diagnostics tools from the DSM was acceptable to get at the root of a problem. After a cogent explanation of their effective uses and possibilities for misuse I believe they can act as yet another tool in a helper’s arsenal of tools. It make sense to use them when appropriate to an individual case to augment counselling work and expedite diagnoses so as to help the client get to their self-helping plan more quickly.

The discussions around Reality Therapy and the WDEP method really resonated with me. I fully believe it is this combination of cognitive behavior, reality, and mindfulness therapy that, used in the right manner and correct proportions, can help everyone be much better human ‘beings’. The demonstration by Dr. Brown and a client of the WDEP model in class time was excellent because it had immediacy, and provided a less contrived, more genuine feel to a counselling setting than the videos.  The ability for him to stop periodically to add timely clarifying comments, and to make sure we caught important details, I thought was immensely effective. I found myself wishing I could have recorded it and re-watched or shared with others.

Student presentations comprised a lot of this weekend and were mostly done very well. It is a great way to cover a lot of material from the book but can tend to become more of lecture than practice because of the presentation format. I believe if had to read each one of the presentations and chapters for content beforehand and then have a 30 minute in-class working session to practice the skills, it would increase the impact and acquisition of the skill. Had we had to create a lesson around the skill that all class members would have to participate in for the whole day, it could have the impact similar to the counselling session. I’m not sure what format this process would take because the major flaw in this approach is having a number of creative and inventive clients. Also a lot of the value for me was lost due to my deflation over having used chapter 13, Activity Scheduling from the third edition of the book rather than what I was supposed to have covered, brief exposure.  I was also coming down with a cold and my zombie-like feelings ruined the enthusiasm I had in previous sessions. 

The political aspects of the use of counselors in school is a huge stumbling block to being an effective helper. There are a number of persons in guidance/counselling positions at BSD schools who are ineffective and there are no mechanisms to make sure they are keeping up their skills or have a mentor for continual reflection during daily practices. Add to this that some have no credentials at all and were placed in the position years ago and it becomes evident why senior administration does not want the guidance counselors actually doing in-session type work, even though Masters candidate now currently get more courses than either psychology nurses or social workers. The push for social workers in schools may have liability issues around parent buy-in, but as I mentioned to my classmates, it is a measure that some principals are employing to get ineffective non-participative guidance counselors out of their inner circle. It is a hobbling factor if part of your team is not working and if they have no relationship with kids or they choose not to counsel, then the onus falls to the principal and vice principal. The fact that senior administration does not value guidance counselors may be because they see them as supplemental and their experiences with them, when they were principals in school, may color their impression.  I believe education of senior and school administration needs to take place around what counselor can do for students now. Also, corrective measures need to be taken to remove those who are not qualified or not doing their jobs effectively in order to help all students from K – 12 in the BSD. This however would mean there has to be timely and accurate assessments for growth and reflective practices. This has not been my experience to date. I believe it will be a very tall order to achieve, given the inertia to the status quo that  I have experienced. Change and accountability are what is needed and they are in short order  due to a lack of true leadership at many levels.

Humanist approaches to Education Post 2

Ideas and  Reflections: Introduction to Counselling 2

The main points that have had impact on me from my second counselling session :

The counselling exercises this weekend I found very helpful because we revisited our nonverbal, opening and invitational skills. I was surprised that they had not vanished from my skill set, even though I had not been pouring over the content in the text. I therefore surmise I have internalized some of what I have practiced. The reasons this is revelatory to me is that I believe that, to date, my learning experiences have been mostly audio visual in nature, employing a mostly psychological splitting mode where I do not interact with others well and mainly see them as uninformed or not willing to learn. I know now that everyone is on a path that is different from me. I have also learned that I can learn and experience differently in a collaborative practical and hand-on manner while still using my intellect to guide me. I have been always seeking knowledge that is more intellectual in the absence of knowledge about my relationships and myself. Now that I have experience mindfulness, I realize what I have been missing and know I need to take a dramatically different approach to my relationships building and learning in the future. This I wish to share with both my daughters: Olivia who has Crohn’s disease which has brought on depression which has been around for well over a year; and Julia who is dealing with anxiety which is causing her spiral into depression an exhaustion. Julia is not listening to what her body is telling her so I will recommend further to her counsellors’ behest, the mindfulness techniques I have learned. Olivia and I will take the mindfulness-based stress reduction course; me supporting her so that she can get help since she tends not to follow anything her mother or I suggest.

The sessions also helped to dispel the notions I had about myself being less than empathetic in most of my dealings with people. I do however question what my performance using these skills would be like in a less clinical setting.

I have been practicing calming, mindfulness techniques and telling my wife and kids about how transformative, the information and practices have been. This home practice us keeping me grounded enough so that situational triggers which used to anger me have a lot less effect. This is especially true while driving on the streets of Brandon where I usually am infuriated daily.

Non-judgemental listening and acceptance of others differences figure largely in my new direction since practicing these counselling skills this weekend! Congruence has been sorely lacking in my outlook of ‘the other’ even though I purport to be accepting do to my experience with the down-trodden and marginalized, as I had spent all my career previous to Brandon School Division on Aboriginal reserves. I was not walking-the-talk as it were.

I have also curtailed my reading Common Dreams (http://www.commondreams.org/  ), TruthDig  ( http://www.truthdig.com/  ), and Democracy Now ( http://www.democracynow.org/  ) and books that I have by Chris Hedges, Henry Giroux, Naomi Klein and others who speak truth to power against the neoliberal elite world we live in. The reason is I feel I need a better worldview; one that does not give me a mood that will cause me to brood over the state of the world, which then triggers a sense of being emasculated and without agency to the oppressive forces at play in the world, and which affects my every relationship. These counselling sessions have reinforced and solidified within me the ‘circle of control /circle of concern’ guiding principle, which I always believed but never practiced.

Recordings was a great idea. It helped me have something more permanent to refer back to instead of using my dubious memory. It is more factual and has the anxiety of the performance removed so it can be examined more clinically. I think that maybe a professional actor, who could challenge in our counselling role to make sure we are guided towards getting thing wrong and then correcting the errors. Learning from failures is quite powerful and I believe may mirror real-life situations more aptly.

I found I was waiting for the moment to pounce on the client in the challenging scenario. I was expecting it. The unexpected is and being put on the spot so we err in our practice I think would be beneficial too. This I got from a client who role-played having a still-borne baby from a relationship from a married man. I had to suppress my shock and remain calm without becoming zombie-like in the face of this extremely challenging narrative. Most men would have great difficulty empathizing in this situation I believe. I am thankful that she did drop this bombshell on me because I had to think and feel my way through it, not just react. This helped me immeasurably.

Pithy phrases I like since they can elicit a create a discourse around the meaning and volume of knowledge hidden behind them. I refer to ‘thoughts are not facts’ and ‘wisdom without thinking’ aphorisms in The Mindful Way Through Depression text. I think that they are a sort of mantra you can keep for yourself that can trigger awareness too, once the skills of mindfulness have been practiced and internalized. During our ‘Thoughts in a Stream’, exercise, as I let all thoughts set on a leaf and drift downstream, these phrases kept coming back to me. I put them on a leaf and let them float away as well. They did help me refocus however.

Humanist approaches to Education Post 1

The Introduction to Counselling course I found to be very different because is was not just an intellect and textually-based thinking and writing course. It provided extremely valuable, hands-on experiential session in Cognitive Behavioral Theory methods, Choice Theory, Mindfulness techniques, and reality and acceptance therapies as well as the theory for the latest advances in neuroscience which augment these counselling initiatives.I would highly recommend it to all teachers since they are counselors to all students , friends and colleagues, and will learn valeable skills to help themselves through self-reflection and learning to let things be.

Educational Leadership Supervision Post 8

Reflections on Leadership from the  BSD Principal Preparatory Program Reflections on the Principal Preparatory Program from Sept. 2010 - June 2011

 Session 1 and 2 were an introduction and orientation to the course and the expectations of learners and the presenters as teachers of leadership principles and values. The effects of leadership and the roles of the principal were also examined. Jamie Lombaert was the coordinator and was later rewarded with a principal ship of his own in 2014.

The presenters in session 1 were: Lena Boisjoli, vice principal at New Era; Phil Vickers  and Shawn Lehman, new principals at Betty Gibson and Earl Oxford respectively; and Terry Osiowy, a seasoned principal with the Brandon School Division for 15 years and current educational leader at Crocus Plains Regional High School. Informal discussions centered on the landscape of educational leadership.

Session two had Mr. Bruce Shamray (principal of Kirkcaldy Heights and Betty Howell (retired) examine the effects of leadership and the compass of the educational leader.What I found most enlightening from this session was that the principal carries all the responsibility in a school. Whether novice or a veteran, the 'buck stops' at his or her desk. All other resource persons, including vice principals, serve supporting roles to his/her leadership. It is a huge amount of responsibility and cannot be ‘about the money' as Mr. Osiowy said. It can only be about the leadership and trying to affect change in the school and community because, as I have pointed out to many students, if you add up the hourly wage for a principal for all the time he spends in school, it would a substantially poor hourly wage.

Younger principals, such as Vickers and Lehman, rely heavily on the veterans to help them in many of their conflicts and challenges as they work to further build upon leadership skills that will be expanded and tested in daily situations, that demand crisis intervention, or Covey quadrant two, focused planning. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Things_First_(book)

I feel the best leaders are the individuals who are reluctant leaders; who have “greatness thrust upon them”. http://nfs.sparknotes.com/twelfthnight/page_110.html . These people have nothing to prove and the job does not carry as much egotism baggage. Those who seek power are seldom the best to wield it. I think this is particularly apt in the field of educational leadership.

The book we were given for the course was School Leadership: Handbook for Excellence in Student Learning. It is a great compendium of edited articles on leadership which was greatly underutilized. We were assigned reading which, sadly, was seldom referred to in the sessions. The book has a complete definition of leadership (p. 3-5). Important to me was that leadership is always based on priorities and includes “ideas of the instructional stakeholders” (p. 3). I have found that teachers are very seldom consulted for any decisions of importance in the Brandon School Division (BSD) and that principals are stymied in making  “purposeful and directional” ( p. 3) changes by the top-down oligarchical structure that exists. The “significant change” that is supposed to accompany successful leaders was and is hampered by the passive aggressive, ‘voluntold’ leadership of the Senior Administration.  As the principals here tonight reiterated many times, “It’s about the kids learning”. The decisions made by others too often create a leader who is emasculated due to protocols, procedures, and hidden agendas that are not communicated to them.

It’s been my experience from these principals speaking candidly, that they are almost never brought into the conversation as frontline stakeholders, and are told what they are to do; their autonomy stripped from them in most ways except administering the school. An example would be Mr. Adamski being told he could choose to keep the International Baccalaureate (IB) courses at Neelin, when in fact they are sacrosanct and will never be terminated. This of course is unspoken but accepted since it was the brainchild of a person who is now in senior administration.  This one example alone causes impotence in a leader and will not allow him to put forth his leadership and vision for the school of which he has been put in charge.   

In the book “The Organized Mind: Thinking Straight in the Age of Information Overload by Daniel J. Levitin, I read about flat and tall organizational structures and the poor communication of the latter. Brandon School Division is decidedly tall in its organizational structure even though it appears from the figure 2 below that it is flat. Most all decisions are channeled through senior administration, which explains why they are busy all the time; perpetually in Covey's quadrant 1 (fig 1). The section of the book with the heading “Power Given Away is Power Gained” (p.12) is in very short supply in the BSD.

Figure 1

Taken from https://i2pblog.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/emma-21.png

Figure 2 
Taken from https://image.slidesharecdn.com/3atta2ihrm-140511062704-phpapp01/95/human-resource-management-38-638.jpg?cb=1399789996

Figure 3

Taken from https://www.bsd.ca/Division/DivisionAdministration/structure/Pages/Default.aspx

I also found it very interesting that a certain principal  spoke with such authority and eloquence about leadership, when I have personally been on the receiving end of this person’s lack of leadership with regard to my daughter’s being bullied at his school. It was a ‘Catch -22 ‘ situation because my wife and I were unable to bring this to light, since we would be deemed unprofessional, but repeated requests to rectify the situation saw no change. Our recourse was to move our youngest daughter to the school of choice at J.R. Reid, where she flourished.

            I guess it could be seen as a strengthening of my character not to escalate this situation by not going to Senior Administration with a request to have the principal show the leadership he was entrusted to use at his school. Rather, it crystallized my thoughts on the leadership roles of some that rise to the top, as proponents of work-to-rule, instead of leading effectively for the benefit of the students and staff in that school.

Session 3 and 4 topics were on visionary leadership, learning leadership, and the examination of the policies and practices of the Brandon School Division; the latter further explored in the next 2 sessions as well. Presenters in session 3 were Ms. Barb Miller, principal of the K-8 School in Alexander and Ms. Nancy Dane of Meadows, another K-8 school. Session 4 presenters were Dave Lim, a new principal at King George, whom I latter shadowed during my mentorship sessions; and Michael Adamski, principal of École Neelin High School, the school to which I was currently assigned.

The roles of a principal in leadership are: 1.instructional 2.transformational 3.moral 4.participative 5.managerial and 6.contingent (pp. 27 - 28).While I agree that most principals are doing a good job with these roles, especially at the K-8 schools, it has been my experience that increasing the commitment of school and staff in a transformational manner and the moral leadership of the principals I have been working with are woefully inadequate. I have not seen moral leadership exhibited in the two high schools in which I have taught. This is unfortunate because concomitant with this role is respect from a leader’s staff, which I believe is imperative for the success of any leader. I do not see much of this evident in the schools that I have worked in. ‘Do as I say not as I do’ is the more prevalent theme, and this does not engender confidence or commitment in staff members.

One very important point I picked up on in most sessions is that a lot of tough and unpopular decisions have to be made by a Principal, especially for instructional and managerial matters. I do appreciate the difficulty with trying to please everyone and becoming ineffectual because of this tactic. Also repeated many times was that students and their learning needs take precedence over the staff’s needs. This happens almost without exception to which I completely agree. A certain amount of ‘suck-it-up’ is required by teachers under any principal. If decisions are framed in a manner that includes staff input, this would bring forth the requisite respect needed to accept unpalatable decisions. However, summarily dismissing decisions as ‘fait accompli’ and unavailable for input or change, stifles creativity and leadership potential in staff members, and they follow obediently, in the same work-to-rule mode to which they have been shackled.

The concept of vision statements for a school was a particularly interesting concept I had never heard before this session. The basic concept of a mission statement for me up to this point was something that the school board and the school itself set and was a nebulous idea that was never fully known or followed by the teachers and other staff members in the school. The vision statement however, should be principal’s first task when he assumes the head leadership role in a school. The principal should ask, “Where do we as a school want to be in 5 years and ten years in an idealized set of circumstances?” An easily understood and shared, pithy statement should then be crafted, to be communicated to all stakeholders in an ongoing manner. The mission statement is more action oriented and states the ways in which all concerned parties will work to achieve this vision; more of an “action-oriented” set of broad guidelines.

The reason it was interesting to me is that by the time Mr. Adamski had taken over as principal of Neelin I had never once heard, or seen,  a vision or mission statement in print or electronically. The succession of principals at Neelin over 7 years was such that this may have not been possible due to such rapid turn-around. However, given the  importance of the vision statement as expressed by Dr. Michaels and the principals present, it made me wonder why we still didn’t have one at year 2 of Mr. Adamski’s placement . My wife, who is principal of O’Kelly in Shilo, had developed a vision statement and a set of mission statements at the beginning of her career as principal. It is important because it unites stakeholders in a moral purpose, focuses and gives purpose to the staff and community and aligns rules, structures, and resources to support the vision (School Leadership, p. 160). This makes the job of the principal and others much easier. Without it, stakeholders are left to guess at the mission ahead and have no direction; feeling lost and not part of the process. This developed shared vision is missing at Neelin and also at Vincent Massey due to a top-down managerial approach. The “unfreeze, change and freeze” method of forcing change for excellence is our high schools, because of inertia and status-quo (p. 176). It is not conducive to widespread buy-in of staff and causes a culture of apathy. This then renders moot any discussion about learning leadership.

Information also retrieved from:

http://ctb.ku.edu/en/table-of-contents/structure/strategic-planning/vision-mission-statements/main

Learning leadership, from the statements the principals were making, seems to be about learning how to survive in a lot of crisis intervention situations. This is a great resource for sharing amongst principals. In fact, some people in the session suggested that a principal’s handbook be published so that new principals could have a training manual. This would save time for rookie and veteran alike.

While I know that K-8 teachers get around to the classrooms so that they are seen to be active in a role other than disciplinarian, I have very seldom seen the various principals in the schools in which I have been placed, drop by unless it was necessary. So much so that there is an immediate fear that something has gone wrong. Often it’s just something administrative, but the feeling of not being called upon unless there is a problem, does not instill confidence in me as a stakeholder in student success and as a valued team member. It shows, I believe, a severe deficit in leadership in my opinion. If the leader is supposed to model successful vision and leadership, it is not evident from any leader I personally worked under to date.

The policies and procedures are now available online instead of in a big paper-bound edition. This is searchable and a highly efficient way for principals to now access valuable information. We did a scavenger hunt for topics to see who could find the policies and procedures fastest for various topics. It a great tool for use by administrators and staff for the first time.

I was on the cell phone policy review committee, until I later found out from the Brandon Teachers Association I was not supposed to do because it was for senior administration to create and staff to follow. I found out from Mr. Malazdrewicz later when I shadowed him in the mentorship part of the course, that policy is translated into procedures; the first is the goal statement and the latter how it will be implemented.  Since procedures are interpreted differently in each high school and by each different administrator, I think the procedures, and by extension their governing policies, are ineffectual at best and ludicrous at worst. For example, inappropriate clothing and cell phone policies implemented at Neelin and Massey are so loosely interpreted as to be not even a guideline for appropriate use of either.  Students can now use cell phones virtually everywhere in the building, and no students are reminded about inappropriate or revealing attire. This seems quite contrary to what we are supposed to be teaching our students: self and mutual respect. I think it again comes down to the overriding principle of ‘expediency first’. Difficult or demanding, long term objectives and leadership are not implemented in favour of quick fixes. I have had several Principals intimate to me in close quarters that it “won’t be my problem in 5 years”. This, sadly, is not visionary or a leadership statement that instills confidence. I wish it was otherwise. This would probably be the defining principle in my decision never to be a principal in the Brandon School Division; the lack of leadership at so many levels that eviscerates the ideals we were learning about in the principal preparatory course.

Before I start on sessions 6 and 7, I will discuss my mentorship placements, in which I purposely tried to diversify my “shadowing” by selecting: a high school principal (Terry Osiowy Crocus Plains, October 30, 2010); a K-8 Teacher (David Lim, newly appointed to King George Elementary); Senior Administrator (Greg Malazdrewicz); and finally  another high school principal (Matthew Gustafson of Vincent Massey who is now Associate Superintendent).We were given a set of questions, prepared by Betty Howell, to help us maximize our contact time with the administrators during each of the 4 half-day sessions. I will concentrate only on the relevant questions for which I received salient responses.

The meeting with Mr. Osiowy was on Halloween day and the students in the building were hyper because of the carnival atmosphere. A teacher did present an ‘attire’ issue to Mr. Osiowy, but it was deemed acceptable in light of the costume aspect of the skirt. It was not made clear if it would have been overlooked in everyday dress, but the fact that a teacher brought it to the principal’s attention was reason enough for me to believe there were some measures in place. This was Mr. Osiowy’s first year at Crocus, and it was widely believed that he was placed there to make the school run more effectively. This would include dealing with the Indian Posse and other gang related issues, as well as taking a less laissez-faire direction with regard to staff and resource allocation, which was the norm up until his placement. When asked about how staff are accommodated and needs met for those who have always fared well in the assignment of courses, Mr. Osiowy repeated an often stated truism, “It’s about the students, not the teachers. The learning, not the teaching.” Teachers should be professional and accept that you accept “duties as assigned” when they are within a teacher’s capacity and skill set. This however is very seldom well accepted because a lot of teachers still see themselves as subject matter experts (SME) instead of facilitators of learning in the new digital paradigm. http://www.thedailyriff.com/articles/the-flipped-class-manifest-823.php

Figure 4 Taken from https://ctl.utexas.edu/

Having not attained a Masters of Education, but instead having learned all his leadership from years of experience, it was refreshing to talk with Mr. Osiowy and get a better idea how a veteran administrator perceived leadership skill acquisition spanning generation X to generation Z. http://www.socialmarketing.org/newsletter/features/generation3.htm  He intimated to me that there was a continual battle with senior administration when it came to running the school effectively and that decisions were often made without consultation. A lot of the time, the adage “ask forgiveness not permission” had to be the prevailing principle in order to get on with the day-to-day affairs of this huge regional high school. Crocus is entirely different than the other two high schools. Funding for vocational programs alone, meant a full time financial person had to be employed. Overseeing finances figured much more prominently for the leader of this school. The moneys generated from the canteen were being used to pay for a position at the school and should have been used to support the canteen or sports, not staffing. This was a particular sore point with him and one he said he would “go to the mat for”. Wrangling and in-fighting between leaders and senior administration degrades morale. Removing autotomy from a leader in any school seems counterproductive to the ends we all serve as educators.

His response to my question of building capacity at Crocus and continuing his vision in a transition plan was, “Why bother? It will get changed anyway.” While this may seem a particularly jaded response, I think it was based more in the practical non-academic realities learned over the years of being as efficient as possible. There would be no sense in spending valuable time on such endeavours when your planning can be drastically altered by the vagaries of budget, enrolment and staffing restraints, and the capriciousness of top-down governance of senior administration.

            I chose David Lim at King George in order to get a K-8 perspective on leadership, especially a newly minted leader; as this was his first year. He was still very much beholden to the veteran staff for guidance on how the school ran in previous years to get his orientation. He reiterated what we heard in the classes: that no one is really ready for the leadership position and you grow into it with time.

Mr. Gustafson stated that a good leader is like a good gardener, tending and nurturing carefully what is doing well in the garden and eliminating the weeds or unnecessary. Weather, removal of crops, soil conditions, and other factors can affect the yield but there will be one. Soil supplements, irrigation, and other means of increasing productivity are the tools an effective gardener use, and these are what the effective school leader needs to seek out. This will minimize crisis and maximize efficiency while trying to integrate all stake-holders’ perspectives and needs. Mr. Gustafson is much more reserved with comments and measures everything he says with reflection before he speaks. He is very diplomatic and I wish I had seen how that worked as an administrator in daily contact with staff and students. We did not get to any practical work however because of meetings which I was excluded from and the time limits of a half day. This was a point brought up by many in the course; that mentoring been longer (2 or more days in succession)

The topics for Sessions 6 and 7 were Stewardship Leadership with a focus on the policies of the BSD; and the personal characteristics of an effective school leader. Presenters for session 6 were: Donna Kormilo (retired principal of O’Kelly school) and Ron Cruishank (retired vice principal of Crocus Plains). Session 7 had many community members: Judy Pilling; Chief of Brandon Police Keith Atkinson; Nonnie Cancade from Investors Group, and Jeannie Millis from BDO.

            The most interesting topics from the first session was the concept of the principal as a steward of human and physical resources as well as the driving force for  making community connections. Until this session, it wasn’t evident to me, and in fact most teachers, that the principal have the responsibility for not only maintenance staff , educational  assistants, teachers and the students but also every piece of equipment and tangible resources within the school. He/she must have a finger on the pulse of what is going on in the school, know how this can serve the needs of the catchment community, and strive to increase the communication between the two.

            Also, interesting was the clearer definition of the role of the vice principal which is for service and support to the principal. VPs can make recommendations and be consulted for their knowledge but they are in no way a proxy for the principal. This was enlightening because, like most teachers, I believed that vice principal is synonymous with principal. This is fact not the case. Every piece of equipment purchased, every cheque signed and every staff member hired is the sole responsibility of the “commander-in-chief”. The implications for this should be made known to all staff so that they are addressing the main decision maker in the school, instead of going the more circuitous route of VP, then to the principal. An example to illustrate would be when a teacher asked Mr. Proulx (the computer technician for IT Neelin) to obtain a new printer for her room. The VP told Mr. Proulx to proceed and he gathered details on models and prices. This work was for nothing because a definitive ‘NO’ was given to the request when it arrived on the principal’s desk. In this case, not only was the communication lacking, but the roles and responsibilities of the principal were clearly not understood by the technician or the vice principal. This confusion could easily be cleared up and not repeated if the principal defined his and the vice principals’ roles to all staff in the building. Confusion and miscommunication like this is still happening at my current position in Vincent Massey.

            Judy Pilling in session 7 gave a brief summary of Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People to which I was already familiar. This again clarified my thoughts on leadership in the BSD as previously stated. Independence and interdependence for staff is paid lip service but not truly valued, practiced and modeled by administrators and thus staff.

Why there were two business people giving presentations was somewhat a mystery. On reflection, I think it may have been to provide some balance, by providing discussion on leadership demands outside of a school setting. Effective leadership traits remain the same for a business leader as are for an educational leader and in a lot of cases (moral, ethical, communication, building capacity, entrepreneurship,) equally as well followed or not. It think it is quite simply easier to dictate than to collaborate and this is borne out in the cases if the  arrogant disregard that large multinational businesses, whose bottom line to investors takes precedence over the customer or the environment. I understand that all leaders are just people, but the fact that they have assumed the role of leader in any arena, means they must be held to a higher standard; one that requires reflection and introspection on what they do to, and for, others. A sense of community and a true “global village” has yet to be realized because local justice does not trump international rules yet.

Whole day session at the Strategic Leadership Council (SLC) monthly meeting. This was without a doubt the most boring and bureaucratic meeting I have ever had the displeasure to experience. The meetings I attended while I was a programmer with McCain Foods Canada, shone out like beacons of hope in comparison to this meeting. Meeting for the sake of meetings. To make sure the power structure is validated. A waste of principals’ valuable time that is mandated monthly. But according to the Harvard Business Review, it is what you would expect if there is no clear plan or priority. https://hbr.org/2014/05/your-scarcest-resource

Topics of note: the new provincial report card and how our K-8 reporting without grades will be difficult to implement inside the parameters of what the Ministry of Education expects

Works Cited

Smith , Stewart C. and Philip K. Piele. School Leadership: Handbook for Excellence in Student Learning. London: Corwin Press, 2006.