Muczynski, Tammy Job Shadowing Competency Winter Clinical Class 2/21/14

Competency X: Leadership

Related Task: Job Shadowing

Specific Task: Spend a minimum of one day (including after school and evening responsibilities, if any) shadowing the cooperating administrator.

Narrative Description of Task: Assist administrator, when appropriate, in accomplishing responsibilities. Maintain a journal of activities and prepare a thoughtful analysis of the number, nature and focus of activities, and with whom the administrator interacted. Describe and assess decision-making process and style used by the administrator in responding to various categories of demands or problems. Identify several crucial lessons the day taught about the art of administration and school leadership.

Process and Rationale: Job shadowing provides an opportunity to experience some of the duties required of the position one is striving to achieve. Because I am already an administrator of an alternative and adult education program, my job shadowing experience was unique. I shadowed a central office staff member instead of a building administrator. I shadowed the Assistant Superintendent of Secondary Education for Troy School District. My daily duties already include principal

responsibilities as I am in charge of student discipline, pupil accounting, hiring, evaluations, curriculum development, assessments, SIPs, IEPs, 504s, etc. By shadowing a central office administrator, I had the opportunity to see what the next level of responsibilities include.

Central office administrator days are very different in some aspects to a building principals day. While both spend a majority of their time problem solving, central administrators seem to have more scheduled meetings and workshops. They seem to be taken out of the district more often as well. Also, they do not spend a lot of time in their offices when they are in the district. They are at building events, running principal meetings, part of strategic planning groups, assisting at school board workshops, attending technology committees, assisting in union negotiations, attending weekly cabinet meetings, and constantly pulled to provide trouble shooting input on district issues that arise. On top of these scheduled events, he is bombarded with parent issues. If parents do not like the decision made by the principal, their next step is him. He has to balance keeping parents satisfied with supporting his staff. This can be tricky. I observed him deal with several parent issues, some via phone conversations, some via his secretary, and some via email communications. I also got the opportunity to observe him deal successfully with a major staff issue, which due to privacy issues I will not discuss further, and sat in on his meeting with the technology director in regards to spending out a successful bond.

I believe I gained the most from the opportunity to attend a principals meeting during my clinical. It was educational to observe how he ran the meeting. Actually, he had the principal of the school we visited run the meeting (although it was his agenda.) It appears each principal gets to run a meeting according to where the meeting is held. The principal of the building visited is

responsible for arranging the activity the group engages in, although the assistant superintendent determines the topic. The group was very cohesive. They were lighthearted and joking, yet extremely productive. There was definitely a routine to the meetings. The principals were comfortable to share issues and ideas freely.

As part of the meeting, we practiced evaluating three teachers on specific domains of the Danielson Evaluation Model by spending twenty minutes in three classrooms, rotating in groups of three to four administrators. We compared our evaluation findings and how we scored each teacher in the specific domain areas. Principals shared concerns with how subjective evaluations can be. They openly shared that they have a hard time judging between a 3 or a 4. While it is easy to distinguish effective teaching from ineffective, it is difficult to determine effective from highly effective. They wanted to ensure there was consistency for staff, however, each administrator rated a little differently. With performance bonuses coming in the near future, this was a great concern of the principals, and rightfully so.

The Assistant Superintendent then took over the next part of the agenda to discuss possible changes to the assessment tools used for grades 6-12. It was interesting to see how he empowered them to assist in the decision making, even though they were hesitant to have to make changes. They questioned what the purpose of adding more and different assessments was. Was it for gauging student success, or was it really for a way to manage the student growth requirements in the new evaluation mandates? They shared concerns of over assessing students. Parents in the Troy community are very educational driven and will take any testing seriously. Staff and administrators will need to be able to share the rationale behind the testing and what

the scores mean. The Assistant Superintendent was able to stick to his guns, though, and request input by the next meeting. Four of the principals scheduled to go visit other districts to see what tools they were using. He was able to show support of their concerns while still getting them to follow through with the requested input. In the end, the group decided to pilot a new tool with only two grades. One assessment tool, ACT Aspire, was brand new and the other NWEA MAP was mainly used in the lower grades. They requested a small pilot until ACT Aspire had more successful implementations to share. The district accepted their compromise and initiated an assessment pilot for the next school year. It was yet another example of him showing balanced decision making. He took into account the concerns of his leaders while still moving forward with district needs.

Reflection:

The Assistant Superintendent of Secondary Education provided me with an invaluable job shadowing experience. I had the opportunity to watch him interact with parent and staff issues, run a principals meeting, and provide input on the technology bond. He can maintain a somewhat laissez faire leadership style with his highly qualified principals. Troy is a strong school district that attracts highly effective leaders, faculty, and staff. The Troy community is also very educationally oriented and supportive of the schools. He has the advantage of hiring from a very strong pool of candidates, therefore, offering the opportunity for collaborative leadership and empowerment in decision making. He maintains their trust and respect by staying well educated in upcoming policy changes and modeling the importance of education. He is a lifelong learner, continuing to add to his degrees while teaching upcoming educators as a professor in the evenings as well.

The most important insight I gained from the experience is the need for consistent, balanced, decision making. One cannot make quick judgment calls in a leadership position. One has to review precedent and consider all possible consequences to the decision. He was good at finding compromises that satisfied parents and/or staff members while maintaining the integrity of the principal involved. Sometimes though, he had to request principals take action they did not support. Although at times it seemed the principal was really okay with his decision but wanted to appear forced to take the action to support their staff. The principals respect him and trust his decision making because it is balanced and consistent. Therefore, I have found that all staffing levels in the education field require consistent, balanced, and well thought out decision making for a smooth running district - from the classroom all the way to the top. It has to be modeled at the top to gain buy in at the other levels. One key to getting support for balanced decisions is staying up to date on the climate in the buildings, district, community, state, nation, and the world. Our world is becoming smaller and smaller with technological advances and the immigration of more and more families into the Troy area.