For reforming a school culture, it is important to point out the characteristics that the superintendent would like the principal to address in order to create a 21st century teaching and learning culture. From the description of the superintendent, first, the students in this high school have limited goals, objectives, and aspirations. Second, it seems that there are a lot of full-time teachers and they teach until they retired. Third, there is a high rate of single mothers need assistance in living their life differently. Finally, there is also a high rate of drug dealing and other practices of criminal behaviors in this district. So, understanding the school needs would help a principal to create a suitable teaching and learning culture.
To create a 21st century teaching and learning culture in this urban high school, it is vital to set a clear vision and goals. As a school principal for this high school, my vision is to improve students’ academic performance through establishing a collaborative environment in which all school staff, students, their families, and community members enjoy working together. Moreover, the school goals would mainly concentrate on creating an outstanding classroom’s environment, assisting teachers who have been teaching for a long time to integrate any new policies or changes, assisting students’ parents, especially single mothers to get involved within the school culture, educating students about the dangers of drug dealing and crime issues in the district, and overall establishing an environment that is full of trust and collaboration.
First of all, providing an exciting classroom environment can assist students learn and improve their academic achievement. According to Dörnyei (2007), “One of the...
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...ugust, 2008). The distance between selfish & selfless leadership. U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, 134,8.
Grant, K. & Ray, J. (2013). Home, School, and Community Collaboration: Culturally Responsive Family Engagement. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
Hinde, E. (2003). Reflections on reform: A former teacher looks at school change and the factors that shape it. Teachers College Record, Retrieved from http://qualitylearning.net/community/brownsville/research/Reflections%20on%20Reform%20-%20A%20Teacher%20Looks%20at%20School%20Change.pdf
Stump, J., Kelly, J., (November 6, 2006). Public school accountability under the No Child Left Behind Act. Columbus: The Ohio Legislative Service Commission Staff, 126, 13, 1-15.
Talgam, I. (2009). Lead like the great conductors. Retrieved March, 2014 from http://www.ted.com/talks/itay_talgam_lead_like_the_great_conductors.html
I had the pleasure of being able to shadow Superintendent Shirley Hall of the Maplewood School District. Ms. Hall took the reins of the district over in 2012 from a very popular superintendent who was credited with making great strides within the district. Although Ms. Hall had very large shoes to fill, she seems to be doing it with grace and enthusiasm. She credits the previous superintendent with making systemic changes and establishing the overall forward momentum of the district, but recognizes that she cannot rest on past success. Her goal is to take the district to the next level of educational excellence by focusing her and her administrative team's efforts on the P.E.L.P. coherence model from Harvard University. This model focuses the leadership's attention on the interdependence of the various aspects of their school district and how they reinforce one another to support the implementation of an improvement strategy. One of Ms. Hall's mantras was change, but not just for change sake, deep change for sustained improvement. Therefore, although Ms. Hall's predecessor was able to put the district on the right path, Ms. Hall has taken the baton and run with it; establishing her own style and path to excellence.
In the text, The Death and Life of the Great American School System, author Diane Ravitch explores her ideological shift on school reform and the empirical evidence that caused this shift. Once a proponent and contributor of testing, accountability, choice, and market reforms, Ravitch’s support began to diminish as she realized that these current reforms were not viable options. She came to realize that the new school reforms focused entirely on structural and managerial adjustments and that no focus was given to actual learning.
So as to improve the K-12 education, the United States needs to redesign the high schools. The initiative by the president to redesign the high schools is significant in encouraging the schools to use the available resources. Schools together with their partners should take into using the resources that exist effectively. These resources are in the local, state and the federal so as to transform the experience in the high schools for the youth through energy of the whole school redesign. This effort of redesigning the high schools will help challenge them and their partners in rethinking learning and teaching. These reforms should constitute of learning that is personalized and college and career exploration that will ens...
... Evaluation. Opposing Viewpoints School Reform. Ed. Noah Berlatsky. Detroit: Christine Nasso, 2011 129-133. Print.
The purpose of this paper is to elaborate on the No Child Left Behind Act, and how the accountability of testing subgroup provisions may play a major role on the responsibilities of a student’ education. The paper also focuses on what information parents are receiving to actually know how their student(s) are performing in class and whether each student’s performance is within state compliance with NCLB.
In my class, we respect ourselves and take care of one another. I will encourage my students to try their personal best in every situation they find themselves in. I will remind students that your personal best effort does not look like your neighbors. I will structure my classroom environment so students can easily collaborate and form positive relationships with one another. The structure of my classroom environment will be full of warmth, patience, and humor creating an environment that is welcoming, safe, and fun for my students. We will look out for another and help one another reach our fullest potential individually, academically, and socially.
School administrators are important in setting the path for a successful school (Glickman, et al., 2014). The principals could play a dynamic leadership depending on how they exercise their beliefs of the organizational and social environment (McNair, 2011). The principals are the primary facilitators for developing the foundations in learning that will last, to manage the student’s performance at schools, and seeking the improvement at school that will cause great impacts in school‘s education (Gordon,1989). In the recent years in the U.S., education has change in a more cultural diversity population, it is imperative that school supervisors, are trained to encounter this cultural issues, but also assisting others with the opportunities to develop appropriate abilities to deal with different cultures (Glickman, et al., 2014).
As a mean to supporting family engagement and child’s learning, it is crucial that programs implement strategies for developing partnerships with families. But do the children benefit from effective family engagement? Family engagement pertains to all young children across ethnic backgrounds and early childhood education programs. Parents from diverse backgrounds, when given direction, can become more engaged with their children. Family Engagement is important for young children’s skill. The skills include literacy, cognitive, math, and social development. When the families engage in their children’s education with the help of other educator’s assistance, this supports the early childhood learning, which is a very critical part to success
The entire community plays an essential role in the growth and development of children within our community. As a school leader, building an inclusive school culture that is open and friendly to all stakeholders using a variety of effective methods is crucial. There is no magic formula to incorporating a positive school culture, much depends on the leadership of the campus. The leadership on campus cultivates the climate providing support and respect for everyone invested in the student’s education.
With social and emotional skills, a high-quality learning environment that has high-quality classroom structure and rules, commitment to the academic success of all students and high performance expectations, student learning is optimized. Attitudes towards learning, behaviour in and out of the classroom and academic performance have shown improvement with development from quality social and emotional learning that is supported through parent involvement and integrated throughout the entire curriculum.
The Educational Philosophy I Will Incorporate in My Classroom Education serves as the foundation to a lifetime of learning. Since every child is unique, I believe that it is important for them to learn in an environment that is both safe and stimulating. By creating this type of atmosphere, the students will be able to realize their intelligence and use it constructively. As a future educator, it will be my goal to establish a classroom that is, 1) non-authoritarian, 2) student-centered, and 3) focused around student experience. These three elements are part of Progressivism, the educational philosophy I plan to incorporate into my classroom.
When all stakeholders share similar core values and agree on the aims of education, reform efforts stand a better chance for success. Knowledge, skills, critical thinking, and citizenship are core values found at the heart of my beliefs for education. I also believe it is the aim of education to prepare students as contributing members of society. In schools where core values and education aims are revisited due to reform implementation, strategies are identified along with a plan for implementation, monitoring and evaluation. The federal government, state, districts, school leadership, teachers, students and parents all have significant responsibilities to make reform efforts a success.
The state’s new evaluation system was in response to administrators who produced, “superficial and capricious teacher evaluation systems that often don't even directly address the quality of instruction, much less measure students' learning” (Toch, 2008). Too often, the “good-ol-boy” attitude would insure mediocre educators would remain employed. Realizing this was often more the rule then the exception, the governor created educational mandates to focus, “on supporting and training effective teachers to drive student achievement” (Marzano Center, 2013). Initially, they expected the school districts and the teachers would have issues and experience growing pains, but in the end the goal was, “to improve teacher performance, year by year, with a corresponding rise in student achievement” (Marzano Center, 2013).
Watson(2001) warned us that if the culture of the school is not hospitable to learning then students achievement can suffer. Fink and Resnick (2001) remind us that School Principals are responsible for establishing a pervasive culture of teaching and learning in each school.
Before such things can be implemented, there is some specific ground work and strategies that must be done within the schools before situations or dealt with and handled. In this groundwork, principals are vital in the success of the program they implement in their schools (Ballard, Argus & Remley, 1999). They are the conductors of each category needed in a successful program. Principals must hold students and staff accountable for their roles in changing the climate of the school and they must allow for the time and manpower implementing a new program will take. Gil (2002, p. 73) explains that first a solid code of conduct must be in place and operating smoothly. These clearly stated rules are to be communicated to all students and staff what the expectation is for behavior and they must be “enforced without