We get caught up in the teaching and delivery process, and the in-system behaviors instead of seeking ways to increase the student's willingness and their ability to access useful knowledge. With many involved in education, the mark of greatness isn't so much about actual learning by students, as it seems to be about owning the credit for a superior instruction process. "My way" of teaching becomes the source of pride for experts instead of "My, how very well they learn."
The shift from traditional perspectives on what a teacher should deem a mark of success requires an initiative from a leader. It requires inspiring, defining, and sustaining new priorities, new teacher roles, and new expectations for all involved. These are the achievements of a leader.
Everyone in education has a different opinion on what is "good teaching" with no real and unbiased way to measure and validate one claim over another. Every nation, state, county, district, school, teacher, student, and parent have differing opinions about what constitutes "good teaching". However, when learning is used as the yardstick, it is easy and very clear to see what is effective, leaving opinion and rhetoric to be irrelevant topics.
All people learn, but each person learns differently. The advancement of learning has to include the adaptation of learner-centric principles, strategies, metrics, and instructional practices. Leadership directly accelerates or hinders the advancement of learning, so, any discussions about teaching and technology are pointless until the influence of the leadership is known.
Many who become leaders of school systems arose from the system itself and as such are frequently products of its culture, advocates for its traditionalism, and blind to what else is possible. Good leaders have vision that pierces through walls and across vast distances. They can see how databases for employee records could be converted to a student registry, how librarians need to become experts on managing digital content, and teachers need to allow e-learning to do the heavy lifting in the lower levels of Bloom's Taxonomy so they can take on the upper levels. Good leaders must be able to share their insights and ideas in such a way as to inspire and alter people's thinking.
Good leaders are not "found". They "become". People who care enough to pay attention to what works, to what people care about, to what needs to be changed, and to what moves ideas into reality. If they don't know these things... they can learn them. And, it is often seen that a person who has been entrusted with a leadership role finds in their heart the motivation to care and learn beyond what they may have believed possible themselves. Their own transformation is as relevant and representative of what changes they will bring about as any other model one might find, but they BECAME that new version of themselves.
True leaders learn how to express their caring in effective ways of initiating, inspiring, explaining, and including. The best leaders learn how to translate their caring into servitude for the sake of the many. With students as their cause to champion, leaders of education must become learners of what is possible, useful, economic, acceptable, and eventual. The ones who actually excel at learning will be the more effective ones at bringing about useful and strategic changes... for the sake of the students.
In a landscape of decorated administrators, principals and superintendents who are the epitome of what the existing system and culture proliferate, new leaders can grow out of the ranks of parents, teachers, volunteers, community members, and even students. Anyone who cares enough to learn about what else is possible, casts their eyes upon alternative applications for technology tools, and seeks to make a difference will become an influence and will initiate changes in the way others think.
Will learning actually advance? Will we be able to measure our progress and see how students are competing internationally? I hope so. In the mean time... let's encourage our leaders to become learners so they can become leaders for learning.
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