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Marian Anderson (1902-1993) said "Leadership should be born out of the understanding of the needs of those who would be affected by it." My initial impression of this statement was, "that is very thoughtful."

Eureka

Leadership in education is not a position; It is a condition of consistent thoughtfulness and the proactive utilization of that thoughtfulness to influence and affect positive change at the local level. Educational leaders do not have the ability to prescribe policies or initiatives and affect change in the global without other equally-equipped, equally-thoughtful educational leaders practicing precisely the same policy and initiative at the local level. Leaders can only affect substantive change at the local level. The educational leader "higher up the food chain" is only able to affect positive change very locally - a superintendent affects change to assistants and directors; a principal affects change to department heads or individual teachers - and then that leader must depend on other leaders in the system being well-equipped, well-prepared, and in a state of thoughtfulness to execute those policies and initiatives.

By this logic - which is indeed nothing less than a reanalysis of traditional leadership models in schools - it is imperative that every individual professional within the school structure embody the qualities of character and service that define leadership. Leaders are discontent to allow practices to continue without analysis. A leader in education is interested in the proactive, consistent design of, reflection upon, and redesign of practices.

No practice, no method, no initiative, no matter how effective or ingrained, no matter how lasting or tried, should or can continue in a progressive constructivist setting without consistent analysis, reanalysis, and questioning. The leader is unafraid of putting everything to the test... including and most especially one's own practices and beliefs.

It is my contention that those in public education who view leadership as a persistent condition of awareness and thoughtfulness of word and action are able to, in the short and long terms, affect greater change towards their own philosophies of education. Those who view leadership as a prescription from a figure of authority will naturally shy away from any guidance, regardless of its format, from "higher" on the chain of command. Indeed, those who embrace leadership discover that many school administrations are "structures of support," not "chains of command."

The teacher leader reflects regularly and consistently upon her practices. She does not take for granted that what she has known in the past is valid now, even deep-seated convictions and principles. S/he is genuinely curious as to what others are doing and how they are doing it, and seeks to incorporate aspects of others' work that she sees as beneficial to her mission into her own practices. S/he seeks the advice of others and actively listens to all points of view, striving for objectivity and questioning her own knowledge and philosophy. S/he is not afraid to temper her beliefs by fire.

Zen

If I have learned anything about leadership, it is that good teacher leaders know the difference between idealism and foolishness. Take the phrase "how people perceive what you say is as important, if not more so, than what you actually say." Years ago, my idealism rejected this statement as vacillating and frail, the sentiment of conformity-for-conformity's-sake mildewing in my mind. However, the more I exist in a state of heightened awareness - the teacher's self-awareness of teacher higher consciousness - of my own practices and how my practices influence others while the practices of others influence my own, the more I realize that this statement is not only true, but a logical outgrowth of my deep-seated conviction of universal relativity. I have long said that I believe reality is as one perceives it, and that if someone thinks I am unwilling, in their world, I am unwilling. This is why the relativity of perception must exist in the teacher leader's world; We cannot live in our own bubbles, practicing our craft and plying our trade the way we do, day in and day out, without care or thought of how others are affected by those practices. Indeed, this relativity is at the heart of situated cognition: the subjective perception of a concept is epistemologically prerequisite to the objective comprehension of that concept. We approach all things with our own biases, with our own ideas, philosophies, views, and opinions; we cannot refute or avoid this as it is inherent to the human condition, rather we can only accept it, be aware of it, and be forthcoming about it. As academic researchers, we accept this intrinsic state of bias as conditional to our approach, but as classroom practitioners, we educators sometimes abandon this heightened awareness - we lose our sense of Zen - in favor of the uncomplicated state of absolutism and all of its "because I said so" and "because it is" yarns.

Returning to idealism versus realism within this state of Zen, for me finding the teacher leader within took a tremendous amount of self-searching, and ultimately the admission of serious errors in judgment in the past due to my idealism or my lack of awareness. Accepting that these faults are inherent to the novice teacher, and that my awareness of these mistakes and my beginning to learn from them was part of my journey from novice to experienced teacher, were the first steps on my journey towards unlocking the teacher leader within. Only through releasing ferocious adherence to ideals and scourging of my mistakes in favor of a more relativistic and thoughtful condition of awareness am I beginning to experience moments in which I effectively operationalize the most idealistic aspects of my philosophy of education.

Show Me The Money

Prior to creating a vision for a school where curriculum, instruction, and technology are involved, it is my responsibility to discover what goals the administration has, what goals the teachers have, and what systemic needs exist within the system as it is. My personal desires - that ever-present and always-active idealism, no matter how tempered it has become by realism and experience - are somewhat secondary to the needs of the school community, though I believe my desires are in the best interests of the program and the school as a whole, as well as the individuals within it.

However, suspending that aspect for a moment, the general vision of a school community that utilizes its resources to reach the maximum possible number of students in the maximum possible number of ways in the maximum possible number of venues is noble in my estimation. Individual goals must be set by individual teachers for individual circumstances. For me, I hope to create an environment of trust, open-mindedness, and generosity within my department into which teachers and students alike are comfortable delving to enhance their understandings and gain empowerment to critically think about and logically solve issues that face them.

I hope to set up a clear, consistent, concise system of communication, both incoming and outgoing, by which my colleagues can acquire information, ask questions, seek guidance, bounce ideas around, and gain professional skill and confidence in their own practices. In short, I seek to be a facilitator of empowerment and self-reflection, so that teachers can ultimately be more informed and more thoughtful about their daily teaching and their long-term planning.

No school is comprised completely of those willing to and who desire to integrate technology into their work. Those who are patently, boldly resistant to such practices cannot be convinced by "frontal assault." Only by demonstrating the value inherent in these progressive practices can we hope to affect change in the entrenched. However, those people who are willing to question what they do are equipped with the fundamental ability to be an ally in the pursuit of progressive technology integration. Those who seek to question what they themselves do, and what others do, even in a specific instance, have something valuable to say. My best vehicle for "getting to" these insightful people is to listen to what they have to say, indeed to provide a forum for those conversations.

Those who obstinately refuse change, and who seek actively to block change, will only be influenced by the gradual eradication of their fear - and I fervently believe that such resistance to a chance to do some real good is stemmed in fear - through careful, diligent, non-invasive demonstrations of the effectiveness of the change in question.

The Numbers Game

We know that data drives decisions in today's schools, but this must not be demonized to the point of disregard. Too frequently, nearly arbitrary datasets are applied in casual ways to school practices without any relevant comparisons between the source of the data and the students on the ground. We do need to examine data, but more and more we must discover our need to generate our own data in objective ways to measure the successes of the initiatives we desire to implement. It should be our aim to utilize data whenever possible to demonstrate the need for support of our effective initiatives and to discover what systems we have in place that need improvement or restructuring. This helps us eliminate "because that's the way we've always done it" as a sentence that any serious educator can stomach. Show me the numbers. This data need not, as any serious educational researcher will tell you, always be numerical or strictly quantitative. If we seek to know about changing attitudes, there are methods of gaining and codifying commentary on subjects in a structured way. Data must inform our decision making at every juncture if we are to gain the support of those empowered to provide us material support to continue making thoughtful decisions.

Data is the discourse within which thoughtful practitioners and professionals can and must examine the efficacy of their practices to ensure that every practice, no matter its longevity or ubiquity, is never left complacently unquestioned or untested; Data enables education to select what initiatives works best, implement those initiatives effectively, and ensure that those implementations continue to improve and adapt over time to the ever-changing needs of its learning community.

Forward

It is my hope, to this end, to challenge the things I take for granted, to attempt to disassemble or counter beliefs that are particularly strongly-held in my philosophy, by pursuing reading, coursework, and exposure that challenges me. Any truly strong belief is worth tearing apart and putting back together again, and in order to stay on the edge, I have to challenge my abilities and shake my foundations regularly.

Ultimately, I feel that my journey as an educator has been best served through the thoughtful input of other professional educators in the graduate setting, and as such, it is my fervent hope to continue to challenge myself and others at the philosophical level and surround myself with reflective practitioners. My life-long love of learning will be served in such an environment, and ultimately I hope will lead to the sort of serious reflection and self-analysis that has helped me to grow so much as a teacher - and as a person - since I began my life's work in education.

Copyright

© 2006-2008, Keith David Reeves. All rights reserved. Reproduction and/or distribution not permitted without the express written consent of the author.

MLA Citation

Reeves, Keith David. "The Way Up: Leadership, Awareness, and Data in Integrated Education." 1 July 2006. KDReeves.com. . <http://www.kdreeves.com/art_wayup.html>.