Leadership For Learning -crista.docx

LEADERSHIP FOR LEARNING I. My Learnings Leadership for learning provides me insights and thoughts on how could I become a better teacher. The first topic, Looking at Classroom Teaching and Learning provides me realization.. it is about getting to know oneself or identifying oneself. Who am I as a teacher, person, and as a practitioner. It tells me that knowing oneself is important to know my role as teacher, as a person. It also means knowing my responsibilities as a teacher. This leads to the realization that I need to improve my teaching and learning. Some important things I learned from this part are as follows: as a teacher, I need to modify my instruction. It tells me that one size does not fit all. I should not use the same lesson plan to all types of learners. I need to modify to suit to the learning needs of my learners. I need feedback from both students and colleagues. This is one way to improve myself. I need to analyze and evaluate my manner. I need to grow professionally through attending relative trainings and seminars and I need to welcome visitors (eg. supervisor, school head, or master teacher) to observe me for feedback and suggestions so I could improve myself more. If I am open to all these changes in my class and in myself, then I could be a better teacher ahead of time. In addition, it tells me that student’s learning is the goal of my teaching, thus, I need to welcome renewal of my priorities, if this is not my priority. For me to achieve this goal, I need to focus on content, assessment, and methods of teaching, so I could my goal… that is student’s learning. The second topic of the book pertains to the structures for Classroom Assistance. Here, I have learned the importance of clinical supervision, peer coaching, critical friends, and classroom action research teams or study groups. As a teacher, I need to warmly welcome visitors in my class, because my superiors are my mentors who could help me or assist me to improve myself better. Clinical supervision would give clear direction to my teaching and instructional plan and decision. Peer coaching is also helpful because it fosters close monitoring of peer progress. The team teacher and the rest of the peers are aids to teachers in monitoring their progress or improvement. Critical friends provide help in improving instruction. Classroom Action Research Teams or Study Groups can help in addressing the needs or issues in school like establishing

research agenda to study student learning goal via readings, visiting classrooms in other school, team teaching, joint curriculum planning, attending conferences or meetings, videotaping own or other classroom. The third topic is format for focusing observation. Salient findings in this atopic include: a) both parties should understand what the purpose of observation is; b) always begin by sharing descriptions with the observed teachers before making any judgments about the effectiveness or the lack of the teacher observed; and c) provides a well-developed framework for teaching which has been developed by Charlotte Danielson, this comprised of a comprehensive definition or classification system of the domains, components, tasks, and subtasks of the art and science of teaching that teachers can make use to expand their own professional knowledge base for selfimprovement. The fourth topic is about the Approaches to Working Closely with Teachers. Important findings are as follows: a) instructional leadership behavior such as: listening, clarifying, encouraging, reflecting, presenting, problem solving, negotiating, directing, standardizing, and reinforcing; and b) interpersonal approaches such as: nondirective, collaborative, directiveinformational, and directive-control. The fifth topic is Direct Applications to Assisting Teachers, among which are as follows: a) the directive control approach; b) directive-informational approach; c) the collaborative approach; and d) the nondirective approach. In the directive control approach, the leader is not hostile or intimidating, instead a businesslike, serious and task oriented. The directive leader has judged that the most effective way to improve instruction is by making standards clear and by tangibly showing teachers how to attain such standards. It is a businesslike, and unilateral approach based on a careful collection of data. The leader’s dominant behavior are clarifying, presenting, directing, demonstrating, standardizing, and reinforcing. In the directive-informational approach, the leader judges that a teacher needs specific and concrete suggestions to deliberate and choose from in the development of a classroom action plan. In this approach, the leader emphasizes clarifying, presenting, directing, demonstrating, standardizing, and reinforcing in recommending options for the teacher to choose and commit to. For collaborative approach, the leader may decide

to speak casually with the teacher. It emphasizes the major behaviors of listening, clarifying, presenting, problem solving, and negotiating. The end result is a mutually agreed upon contract between the leader and the teacher that delineates the structure, process, and criteria for subsequent instructional improvement. The nondirective approach rests on the major premise that teachers are capable of analyzing and solving their own instructional problems. It highlights the behaviors of listening, encouraging, clarifying, presenting, and problem solving to create a teacher self-plan. The six topic covers the criteria for assessing teacher competence and growth. Fostering intellectual and self-motivated growth on the part of teachers means that the instructional leaders have to use approaches that demands greater choice and thought on the part of the teacher. Such approaches include directive-control approach used for emergency situation, directiveinformational approach used for minimal way to begin to push initiative from the leader to the teacher, collaborative approach best used when teachers themselves have greater knowledge and understanding of their teaching than leader does. Instructional leaders may use level of commitment and level of abstraction to assess an individual status of the teachers. The last topic presents purpose, strength, and collegial force for school success. Some aspects are needed in order for a school to succeed. These include renewing classrooms and schools which are presented in certain elements such as student learning, content, method, assessment, focus, approaches, structure and formats, school renewal priorities, professional development, and evaluation. It also needs teachers’ evaluation.

II. Related Personal Experiences Among the topics, I can best relate my personal experiences to “How Do Teaching and Learning Improve.” Things discussed here served as constant reminder to me that that teaching is a continuous learning profession, and as a teacher I need to grow in my profession. Some of the things that I am now practicing include, modifying lessons. I always believe that learners in my class have diverse background, and diverse needs, so I have to differentiate my instruction as the need arises. Since my learners are grade school children, they cannot give or provide me feedback,

however, I always ask them to if they could follow my teaching or they understand what I am teaching to them. In this way, I could always make adjustment with my instruction or make a paradigm shift of my strategies, leading to the best possible strategies where my learners could better understand me and that learning would take place. I also share my lesson, strategies, and things I think “my best practices” with my colleagues. I seek their suggestions for further improvement. I also like the presence of my immediate superior. Some teachers might not like this scenario, but I welcome this because the supervisor or observer can give me concrete feedback about my teaching so I could better improve myself as a teacher. Also, I am trying my best to keep myself updated with the trends in education. I do professional reading, bench marking, and I am pursuing graduate studies for me to capacitate myself with more learnings and for me to feel confident and competent as teacher.

III. My Suggestions/Recommendations/Other Ideas I want to Contribute I suggest that all teachers needs to have the biggest improvement in their lives. They should be often to observations, suggestions, feedback, and results of evaluation of their performance. These things could help them to better improve themselves as both teacher and person. Teachers have to keep in mind that students’ learning should be the focus of their instruction. So keep in focus, teachers have to improve themselves, especially their instruction. That is why, they should not be afraid of the presence of observers and the feedback they bring to them. I understand that teaching is a difficult profession because it has lots of demands, but as a teacher, one has to be committed. Those difficult tasks are part of one’s job. If this is really the profession that a teacher would like to have, then she or he has to do it religiously. Every teacher has to be reminded that teaching is more than a job… it is a vocation.

On the other hand, I would to recommend that it could be better if observers may use approaches of observation based on the needs of the teacher and employ major behavior for observation such as listening, clarifying, encouraging, reflecting, presenting, problem solving, and reinforcing. At times, some teachers feel the pressure of observation because some observers are “fault finder.” This causes stress to teachers, thus, instead of welcoming the presence of observers, they wished not to have one.

IV. My Plans As always, I am doing my best to improve myself. I am open to anything that could help me to become a better teacher and to achieve what Maslow called “self-actualization” that is, achieving the highest possible position of my profession in the future. As a teacher, I am religiously doing my job, I assure to myself that the center of my instruction is students’ learning, that is why, I have to always prepare the best instruction for my learners.