Leadership Structures For High Schools

Achieving a school district’s mission and vision requires the commitment of its stakeholders. In order to involve them in the process, it is necessary for educational leaders to “motivate staff, parents, students, board and community members” (Educational Leadership Constituencies Council, 2002, p. 4). The transformational leadership theory emphasizes the importance of educational leaders acting as role-models in order to motivate and inspire the school community. This approach has the potential to involve all stakeholders, leading to increased student success (Bush, 2007). The Assistant Director of Special Education in Northwest ISD directly supervised the school district’s assessment staff. Her education, experience, and passion set an example for her subordinates, stimulating them to achieve more, leading to her promotion to Executive Director of Student Services.

Throughout my high school career I have encountered the chance to experience the position of being a leader for my peers. I have pursued leadership skills by being an officer in HOSA for three years, leading community service events for NHS, and taking charge on running school events in Key Club. I have obtained valuable leadership skills throughout my high school career, and encouraged the club members to take charge and develop leadership skills to help them in the future.

Teacher leaders and administrators play a vital role in the overall organizational structure of a school. As discussed in Educational Leadership, there are ten roles that teacher leaders tend to gravitate towards. The roles of teacher leaders vary according to duties and responsibilities placed on the teacher leader, they include the following: resource provider, instructional specialist, curriculum specialist, classroom supporter, learning facilitator, mentor, school leader, data coach, catalyst for change, and learner (Harrison & Killion, 2007, pg. 74-77). As a teacher leadership at Lake Oconee Academy, I personally see my duties and responsibilities covering several of these roles. Since the beginning of my employment at Lake Oconee

Dr. Fremstad has been instrumental in the implementation of Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) at West Fargo High School. She understands the power of teacher collaboration and has led the charge to train and monitor the program with fidelity. Jennifer has inspired educators to share student evidence of learning and extend intervention or enrichment learning opportunities based on the data. In addition, she advocates on the importance of frequent classroom visitations with her leadership team and establishes annual visitation goals to support teachers and

Chino Hills High School has an amazing leadership and ASB program. The students and staff promote positivity in every activity that they host for CHHS. On January 11th, the Chino Hills High School leadership and ASB did an amazing activity where they invited another leadership group called CASL (California Association of Student Leaders). Leadership and ASB connected with CASL to help motivate some middle school leadership students who are incoming freshmen. The CHHS leadership students had an opportunity to not only motivate the middle students to become better leaders, but to also allow them to participate in some fun activities. They did many activities such as, wrapping themselves in newspaper and trying to create the best out of something

Throughout my four years at the Bethel Park High School, I have represented myself as a strong leader. I never focused myself on just one aspect of leadership. To start, I have worked very hard to be considered as a captain of the cross country team, I currently hold the position of treasurer of the Journalism Club, and I am the head of a committee for the Principal Advisory Committee of Students. Being a leader in not something that I could learn from a textbook, it is a skill learned through my countless experiences. My current jobs that I hold give me great opportunities to prove my leadership skills. One of the most difficult is my referee job, which forces me to take the lead over coaches, players, and parents.

Future school leaders are expected to understand, address, and solve problems they will encounter (Copland 2000). School leaders must also be able to anticipate a problem before it happens. Problems that school leaders are faced with can be identified as routine, structured, or ill-structures problems. Routine and structured problems are the familiar issues that leaders face, ill -structured problems are more complex. Ill-structured problems are more complex and lack clarity and present numerous obstacles. The ill-structured are the situations that are unforeseen and cannot be anticipated. The Interstate School Leader Licensure Consortium or ISLLC has developed six standards that provide a foundation for thinking about ill-structured problems.

Leadership is a very difficult yet gratifying role to play in Garden City high school. Throughout the school day I feel I put in a surplus of effort in everything I do from homework to being kind, but a lot of the time I feel I am not noticed and that is what I think is the biggest challenge of being a leader; not being noticed but still going on in what you do, also whenever things go wrong the leader is the first to be blamed. So if your wanting to be a leader you're gonna have to be tough and confident.

In order to implement an effective Professional Learning Community (PLC) for the development of a Google-Based School, the team must create an environment conducive to their needs and how they best work in a group setting. In order for the Professional Learning Community to be effective in the implementation of a school-wide initiative, the members of the community must have confidence that they are the main group leading to change in the school (Wood, 2007). Creating a functional team involves key factors involving the team characteristic, recognizing positive and negative forces relating to these characteristics, and overcoming the negative forces in a systematic manner (Mealiea, & Baltazar, 2005). Moreover, importance for creating an effective Professional learning community focuses on open sharing, developing skills, identifying and utilizing resources, and forming frames of reference (Spanneut, 2010). Each of these characteristics falls into the overall systematic creation of the learning community that works to increase student learning by creating and achieving specific goals and through setting ground rules, goal setting and analysis, and delegation of tasks in order to prepare to implement the Google-Based School initiative.

Educational leadership has changed and evolved through the years as a result of dramatic changes in the school culture, student demographics, environment, science, technology, and economy. Given the complexity and unpredictability of the demanding challenges to educate all children, prospective school leaders may find it desirable to define their own beliefs about instructional supervision and evaluation as they prepare for the rigor of school leadership practice. While enacting supervision, a supervisor is guided by certain values, assumptions, beliefs, and opinions that support the purpose and process of supervision (Sergiovanni & Starratt, 2006). This can be described as the supervisor’s

The hallmark of my leadership is that it is not only defined by and confined to what I do in Kohler High School, but also by the impact I’ve had upon the other pillar institution in my life: North Shore Academy of Gymnastics.

Educational leaders are responsible for adapting instruction to meet the needs of their ever-changing student body and staff. This requires leaders to commit to professional development through continued learning opportunities. Hirsh and Hord suggest that “one of the most powerful ways for principals to extend their learning is to participate in professional learning communities (PLCs)” (2008, p. 27).

Mayer, Woulfin, and Warhol (2015) present a qualitative case study of how intermediary organizations' coaches are utilized to support and develop principals and teachers as they seek to bring about substantive school improvement. The authors examined one individual coach that was engaged as an intermediary for a comprehensive school reform model, the Together Initiative (TI). TI was designed and implemented by stakeholders in a Northeastern State to facilitate organizational change and improvement. To evaluate the subject coach enacted TI reform, the researchers utilized communities of practice framework and found that although coaches were initially viewed as the leaders of the reform effort, it was the teachers who enacted key aspects of

Marzano, McNulty and Waters propose five steps for a plan of effective school leadership. The first step is developing a leadership team with purpose. The definition used for a purposeful community is one with the collective efficacy and capability to develop and use assets to accomplish goals that mater to all community members through agreed-upon process (Marzano, et. al, 2005). The second step is distributing some responsibilities throughout the leadership team. The third step is to select the right work. The fourth step is to identify the order of magnitude implied by the selected work. The last step is to match the management style to the order of magnitude of the change initiative. The last step incorporates whether this is first or second order change.

Effective school leadership today must combine the traditional school leadership duties such as teacher evaluation, budgeting, scheduling, and facilities maintenance with a deep involvement with specific aspects of teaching and learning. Effective instructional leaders are intensely involved in curricular and instructional issues that directly affect student achievement (Cotton, 2003). The writer of this paper acknowledges that school principals should play the role of instructional leaders, not just a school manager. The reality is that are many demands on a principals time and management skills making it difficult for most of them to spend time in classrooms, when performing teacher evaluation. Principals often make sure that teachers