How do you know if your leadership helps students?
As an educational leader, you want to make a positive impact on your students' learning and well-being. But how do you know if your leadership practices are effective and aligned with your goals? In this article, you will learn about some ways to assess and improve your leadership impact on students, based on research and best practices.
The first step to knowing if your leadership helps students is to define your purpose and vision as a leader. What are the values, beliefs, and principles that guide your actions and decisions? What are the goals and outcomes that you want to achieve for your students, staff, and school community? How do you communicate and model your purpose and vision to others? Having a clear and shared purpose can help you align your leadership with your students' needs and interests, and create a culture of learning and collaboration.
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My purpose is to pave the way for students to achieve success by modeling respect for others with differing opinions, patience when others might show ignorance, and a confident belief that transcends the ordinary. Every student is an individual creation in process of improving their own strengths. I represent my clients to get their voice heard while enabling a sometimes-insensitive community to come alongside and support them in their need to accomplish the overriding goals of IDEA 2004...to live independently, further their education upon graduation from high school and/or to gain meaningful employment.
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One thing I've found helpful is to define it, but then make sure I'm 100% in it with them and commited to achieving it. That means also being clear about the execution of the vision. Walking with them, listening to their ideas, finding their strengths and bringing those along to support the vision being enacted.
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Clear and open communication with stake holders is the first step to being an effective leader. The first area of communication is to cascade the purpose and aims of the institution to all the stakeholders. The second area of communication is to receive feedback from the teachers, students and the support staff. Clarity and transparency in communication fosters trust and a culture of collaboration which will help leaders succeed.
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In a world of various leadership styles, I believe it should be grounded in the purpose. The purpose is shaped by your values, believes, and your identities. Identities are the core of who we are, and who we want to be as an educational leader. That way, what you do as a leader will be aligned with who we are!
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I found shared vision among all stakeholders of the institution is important otherwise, as a leader we stuck to move forward in achieving the goal. For a clear vision all have be educated in a way to infer th future
The second step to knowing if your leadership helps students is to use multiple sources of data to measure and monitor your impact. Data can include student achievement and growth, attendance and behavior, engagement and satisfaction, well-being and resilience, and feedback and perceptions. Data can also come from different sources, such as assessments, surveys, observations, interviews, portfolios, and artifacts. Using multiple sources of data can help you capture a comprehensive and balanced picture of your students' learning and development, and identify areas of strength and improvement.
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I am all about data informed decision making. However, I have sometimes regretted not following my intuition more, and especially sooner, but I have very seldom regretted not following the available data enough. Good decisions consist of many things, data being one, gut feeling and experience being another.
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Developing open communication with students is a great way to assess your contributions as a leader/mentor in their lives. What doesn't get measured, doesn't get managed.
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Data will be very helpful to take decision easier, even we have proper data we will struggle to take decision due to skeptical about accuracy of data
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I agree that data is vital, especially when it helps to see the journey of a pupil and to understand them better. When it is most useful, in my experience, is when a pupil takes ownership themselves for their own learning, through metacognition, and gets to change their own progress data.
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I strongly believe that being a teacher is all about looking into their eyes, checking their focus understanding and comprehension. Whenever they tune out you have to catch that attention again. Adapting to their pace of learning is a key to collect enough data to evaluate one's leadership style. Appreciating their little improvements, fully answering their enquiries, and celebrating their mistakes are equally important to both; checking the efficiency of your leadership style and their learning progress.
The third step to knowing if your leadership helps students is to engage in reflective practice, both individually and collectively. Reflective practice is the process of examining and evaluating your actions, assumptions, and outcomes, and using the insights to inform your future practice. Reflective practice can help you identify your successes and challenges, learn from your experiences, and adapt your leadership to changing contexts and needs. You can engage in reflective practice by using tools such as journals, portfolios, rubrics, or frameworks, or by participating in professional learning communities, coaching, or mentoring.
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In my experience as a leader and VIVA-GO values coaching, reflection ( head) means self and other awareness. This in turn leads to responsibility ( hands) for our own actions, learning and relationships ( heart) From this we build resilience ( feet) to step out and tackle the challenges and adventures learning brings.
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Yes, but even more than reflective practice is evaluative practice. How do we know we actually made a difference? Whom did it impact and how do we know? Digging deeper into evaluation of our practice or change, helps to really ensure that we're assessing the quality of what we've done looking at evidence to determine impact. Reflection absolutely has its place as it forces us to stop and look back, but evaluation of practice makes us ask and evaluate data helping us to do better, or more or know we've done well.
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Teaching is a life-long learning activity, as such, often times we learn more from our mistakes rather than our accomplishments. Being a reflective practitioner is paramount as well as taking into consideration socio-emotional learning practices if one is to have any impact upon our students ✨✨✨
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In music it is all about leadership. Also, understanding Curriculum. Creating lesson plans is like creating a beautiful painting. It may morph with your students progression. Like any good painting it takes patience, love, and time.
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Reflection is essential. Going back to the Stoics in Ancient Greece, reflecting on one’s actions and decisions is central to improvement, both in an individual and organisational level. As leaders, how effective can we be if we fail to reflect, adapt and dare to succeed (and fail) time and again based on the feedback we get from deep reflection? This is where the Principal/Head of School is key; do they meet regularly with their senior leaders to coach/mentor and impart wisdom where appropriate? If not, best to start right away!
The fourth step to knowing if your leadership helps students is to seek feedback and input from others, especially from your students, staff, and parents. Feedback and input can help you understand the perspectives and expectations of your stakeholders, and how they perceive and experience your leadership. Feedback and input can also help you build trust and relationships, foster a culture of feedback, and involve others in decision-making and problem-solving. You can seek feedback and input by using methods such as surveys, focus groups, interviews, or consultations.
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It would be great to always have representation from all the stakeholders: staff, faculty, students and other stakeholders in main management bodies. In this way you'll have always both feedback and input at hand when you are developing your institutional practise as well as academic contents. You'll need a strong feedback mechanisms (surveys, focus groups etc.) to follow student wellbeing, start-up business related to education and how the students achieve employment. In highly academic context its important that there is good participatory practise for feedback and lots of dialogue to benefit from the fresh knowledge base that students have.
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Feedback from others is critical. Student interaction and participation makes for a more interesting and lively classroom and also lets me know that they are taking away the big ideas and historical lessons the curriculum provides and I present. Peers provide observation and best practices. Outside speakers have an objective and valuable perspective. All of it leads to a better overall learning experience- for the students and for me.
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When in a leadership role in can be a challenge to get real, honest feedback from direct reports. Even if you are genuinely open to feedback. Generally speaking, 360 surveys give a good picture of your effectiveness and a more balanced perspective. I also think family can be brutally honest and supportive when helping to understand how your actions impact on others. However you seek feedback, do it with genuine intent and gratitude, even if it's not something you particularly like hearing.
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I have always looked forward to taking feedback. It is important to success whether good or bad. It is necessary to take Feedback purely for what it is, Feedback.
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Regular engagement and open discussions with students and staff fosters trust. Trust leads to revelations which leads to opportunities for growth.
The fifth step to knowing if your leadership helps students is to implement action plans based on your data, reflection, feedback, and input. Action plans are the strategies and steps that you take to improve your leadership practice and impact. Action plans should be SMART: specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. Action plans should also be aligned with your purpose and vision, and based on evidence and best practices. You can implement action plans by using tools such as action research, improvement cycles, or project management.
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I taught at a middle school military academy for 81/2 years in the city. I was an LTCol in the Army and led my students by example...but more important I taught my kids the rudiments of good leadership by the same principles I was taught in college ROTC. This built self-confidence and discipline and respect. Later when I moved into teaching history at the high school I saw that all my JROTC students ran the whole student body in all leadership positions... Exhibiting and teaching effective leadership has a big payoff for all students
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Being successful musicians is a SMART goal. I work with them on every aspect, not just on performance. So many people judge music and music classes on the performance. If the performance is good they give the praise to the kids, if bad, you as a teacher are at fault. You do things to make sure parents can praise the kids.
The sixth step to knowing if your leadership helps students is to evaluate and celebrate your progress and achievements. Evaluation is the process of collecting and analyzing data to determine the effectiveness and outcomes of your action plans. Evaluation can help you monitor and adjust your action plans, and demonstrate your accountability and transparency. Celebration is the process of recognizing and acknowledging your efforts and accomplishments, and sharing them with others. Celebration can help you motivate and inspire yourself and others, and build a culture of appreciation and recognition.
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Objective evaluation is so important! Whether done internally or with partners from other schools, it’s great to get feedback on a regular basis to inform planning. As for celebrating success, my own view is to go as big as you can with it! From weekly praise postcards to awarding/rewarding high performance we must collectively highlight our achievements as a school community as much as possible.
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A school leader is able to evaluate the effectiveness of his/her leadership in two ways. Firstly, the cognitive development, and it can be evaluated through a well developed system of formative and summative assessments in line with the learning objectives. However, it depends on the effectiveness of the School assessment system. Secondly, Social, Emotional and Physical development. It is equally important and the assessment is rather difficult compared to the former one. Anecdotal records, rate of disciplinary issues, achievements in arts and sports etc can be used to assess the same. However, the data would be qualitative rather quantitative. To conclude, we can say if we are able to mould well rounded personalities, it is successful.
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