3 Powerful Strategies to Enhance Instructional Leadership
“I’m coming for an observation to your class, please be ready”, does it sound more like instructional leadership or traditional pedagogy? Here’s 3 ways to enhance instructional leadership.
We’ve all been through the good old school days where the school head informs the class teacher of an observation, the entire classroom transforms into an act from Shakespeare. From formal language being spoken to polite gestures to being a lot more active, the class room is a lot more vibrant; for quite a while.
These are actually some of the pitfalls of weak instructional leadership, and the old-fashioned way of instructional leadership would cease to exist in a few years as schools and technology advance, so how can you enhance instructional leadership?
- Simplify Expectations
In order to truly achieve improvement in the educational standards and monitor the well-being of classrooms; primarily , a well defined frame work is required. A framework which encompasses the goals and motives, a teacher needs to aspire to and fulfill during the course of teaching.
Instead of laying the mission and vision fruitlessly as a means of decoration and awe in every class room to appeal to parents, a much more rigid approach is required to make expectations clearly defined.
Upon the start of every semester these aspirations could be made clear to all of the teachers, it could be in the form of a presentation at an auditorium, where the entire school faculty attend in order to be on the same page.
Every teacher has to adhere to these fundamental motives; however, may slightly tweak them, based on their knowledge and expertise after consulting with the head faculty.
Experienced teachers due to their long hours of work and strive for improvement, generally have their own expectations of the curriculum and their own methodology of teaching, so your role is to really identify how these expectations can be well-fitted to the framework without compromising the foundations to which all teachers agree to.
This could be done perhaps, by voicing the opinion of teachers throughout the presentations and workshops conducted in the semester or even be done through feedback in emails, which are seriously taken into consideration.
A powerful means of achieving consistency in regulating the framework throughout the semester is by documenting the entire framework into a handbook, a well defined comprehensive handbook with all expectations and practices could serve as a good reference point for teachers so it becomes a lot more feasible to encapsulate core objectives, teaching methodologies and assessment criteria.
Why not harness the use of technology?
Undoubtedly, frameworks can get a bit untidy and may drift teachers away from adhering to it completely, this could be due to a lack of clarity and conciseness in certain topics. This is where we make use of technology!
Make the expectations as easy, accessible and interactive with the best use of technology. If you have an online platform or a unified portal where teachers are all connected and can access resources, participate together in discussion, they can always stay updated on any modifications that come to the framework eventually. One of the best ways to implement this through existing platforms is using Microsoft Teams which also allows for document sharing as a bonus.
2. Ditch the Acting Game
What exactly do i mean by the acting game? Undoubtedly, fake observation.
The means which leads to this pony show ritual is you as a head-teacher, being weak in leadership practices; and kind of, using this as a scape goat to escape the reality. No doubt, it’s decent that teachers be let known of an observation before, but how long before? Most certainly not the day before or the same day. The ideal time is the start of the semester.
If teachers were truly prepared and remained consistent throughout the semester, there would be no need for extra preparation going overboard for an observation. So your focus towards teachers should really be based on the work they put in for the future.
Show up when you are not meant to show up, it is your right as a head teacher. You can honestly observe how the teaching really goes about, so you can collect effective feedback instead of acted out jargon.
In addition to this, you should always encourage a culture of continuous improvement. This is achieved through dialogue. Instead of relying completely on one-off observations, there should be a means of dialogue and feedback between the teachers and admin. Open the doors so that teachers feel completely supported throughout their journey and so that they address their challenges in real time.
3.Prioritizing continuous learning
The more well-versed you are at educational practices and research, the better you would be able to implement this as means of instructional leadership.
As the saying goes ‘practice what you preach’, as much as it is important for teachers to engage in scholarly research for teaching practices, you should also engage in this, perhaps reading research papers, articles, blogs or even podcasts of famous teaching methods on a daily basis .
The more you increase in knowledge; through experience you would be able to find correlations in teaching practices, which could allow you to form and implement the best teaching method for effective results.
Why not hold a study session with other teachers? This would allow the teachers to develop the inclination for further teaching improvement. “Teachers teaching teachers”, as interesting as it sounds, it could really allow for better collaboration in research practices.
The real leaders are those who go out in to the field and walk the talk, we’ve seen this through most influential leaders, how do we apply this in the instructional leadership context?
Start teaching! Yes you as a head teacher of school principal, can grasp a strong understanding and feel of what its like to be a teacher. Put yourself in their shoes, to see how well you can comply to your own instruction. An alternative could also be co-teaching with others so it would make it a lot easier for you to adopt this.
The more you do this, the better your relationship with teachers would be. The stronger your connection, the better your influence on the teacher for improvement in education practices.
