Upcoming class: Instructional Leadership
My next class is quickly approaching this weekend: EDAD 612, Instructional Leadership. At the heart of school administration is teacher growth and development. A good, honest look at my own developmental needs as an administrator tells me that this topic, along with curriculum, are my two highest areas of needed growth. Certainly, my own learning in these two areas will take place both in this course and through my own educational pursuits.
I’ve already picked up and have begun reading through the two required books:
- Charlotte Danielson, Enhancing Professional Practice: A Framework For Teaching, Virginia: Association for Supervision and Instruction, 1996.
- Sally J. Zepeda, The Principal As Instructional Leader, New York: Eye on Education, 2003.
I am quickly finding that the Danielson book especially is considered THE basis for effective teacher evaluation and retention in our schools today. And for good reason. She is able to break down the art/science of teaching into definable, empirically-derived components, and transform them into a practical, collaborative method of professional development. Good stuff.
A look through the syllabus tells me we’re going to be doing plenty of hands-on activities in order to achieve our course objectives. And that’s just fine by me. As I get older, I tend to learn less in the sit-and-get model, and more in the sit-and-discuss, stand-and-practice model. This is a 3-credit class, so I’m going to assume that the workload will be quite a bit more than our previous 1-credit classes.
My goal is to have both books read and digested, and have a good grasp of syllabus concepts before we hit our first session on Friday. I’ll post more as we go along.
Technorati tags: education, teaching, Instructional Leadership, school administration, teacher evaluation, professional growth, developement
April 19th, 2007 at 8:52 pm
I just finished up a class where we used Danielson’s book. I found it helpful for understanding what teachers were expected to do. I liked her charts for each domain, those were helpful. However, her work is extremely extensive and I’m not sure how useful I would actually find it in practice. I can see offering some general suggestions to teachers based on the domains discussed in the book, but I don’t know that I’d use it as a comprehensive evaluation? I don’t know, maybe it’s just me. I just finished Educational Research (the hardest class I’ve taken to date) and I’m in the middle of a linguistics class for my ESL endorsement. I’ll be taking “Instructional Leadership & Classroom Evaluation” next fall. This summer I’m signed up for “The Principalship,” “Theories of Teaching and Learning,” “Human and Financial Resources,” “Language and Cognition” (ESL), and “Foundations of Second Language Education” (again, ESL).
Looks like were almost at the same place in our education. I’ll be done with my M. Ed. Admin. in May of 2009, you?
April 19th, 2007 at 9:01 pm
Spring of next year, for me. Guess that would make it 2008. This isn’t a master’s program for me, because I already have one of those. It’s a certification program, which is only 17 hours, including 6 hours of internship next year. I have the budgeting class and…something else this summer.
We use the Danielson model pretty extensively in Hermiston, though we also line it to our district curriculum goals as well. It’s a good evaluation system, if you ask me, probably the best I’ve been evaluated under so far.
Get a hold of Google talk or Skype before this weekend and drop us a line. I’ll have my laptop with me the whole time and I’ll leave both of those on.
April 19th, 2007 at 9:10 pm
I’ll see what I can do about Skype of Google Talk (haven’t used either one yet, I know, I’m in the dark ages).
I lied, It’s May of 2008 that I’ll be done in. Not 2009. Oops. When you say “6 hours” of practicum, how many actual ground-hours is that? I’m taking a 4 credit practicum and it’s 360 hours, minimum. Yeesh! I’ll be doing that all next year too.
Best of luck to you, I’ll see what I can do about catching up with you this weekend.