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ED 617 Principalship Fall 2003 Wednesdays 4:30-6:30pm Irwin Blumer, Ed.D.
Other times by appointment.
Course Description Objectives Requirements Session Topics Required Texts Assignments This course will introduce students to the role and responsibilities of the principal. It will help students to understand the traits that make one successful as a principal. Emphasis will be placed on the principal as:
Participants will explore the complexities of providing leadership in schools, in order to gain insight into and clarification about their own personal ideas of what constitutes an effective principal. Students will be expected to be reflective and to gain significant insights into their own value system and how that affects their potential leadership style. Writing in a reflective journal after each class will help to develop that insight. Objectives: Students will examine and gain greater understanding of the many different forces and constituencies with which the principal must interact in a school setting.
Course Requirements: Attendance is expected at all classes. Unexcused absences will result in a lowered grade. Class participation 15% Session Topics:
Saphier and King, "Good Seeds Grow in Strong Cultures,"Educational Leadership, March, 1985 Paper due (9/17/03): Write a 2-4 page paper, which describes and analyzes your school culture or a school you know well. Make certain that your paper reflects an understanding of the readings that you have done to date.
Sergiovanni, Chapter 4 Assignment 1 - due 9/24/03
Sergiovanni, Chapters 2, 3, 6, 7 Paper due: Review your understanding of the role and responsibilities of the principal defined so far in this course. Using that as a basis, conduct an interview with a school principal. During the interview, ask the principal: •What he/she believes his/her role and responsibilities are? Analyze your notes or tape from the interview and write a 2-4 page paper, which clearly states your definition of the role and responsibilities of an effective school principal.
Sergiovanni, Chapters 11, 12, 13 Assignment 2 - due 10/8/03
Roland Barth, Improving Schools from Within, Jossey Bass Publishers, 1990, Chapters 2-6 (on reserve) Recommended.
Assignment 3 - due 10/29/03
Sergiovanni, Chapters 8, 9, 14
Richard Sagor, "Three Principals Who Make a Difference," Educational Leadership, February 1992 Assignment 4 - due 11/12/03
Kelleher, P. "Implementing High Standards," Education Week, April 2001 (recommended) Paper due: Write an analysis (3-4 pages) of the book Other People's Children, by Lisa Delpet and Dreamkeepers by Ladson-Billings. •What are the implications for instruction in school?
Class Readings Richard Elmore, "Why Restructuring Alone Won't Improve Teaching," Educational Leadership, April, 1992, pages 44-48
Class Readings S. Fordham and J. Ogbu, "Black Students' School Success: Coping With the Burden of 'Acting White'," The Urban Review, Vol. 18, No. 3, 1986 Final Paper - due12/17/03 Required Texts: OTHER PEOPLE'S CHILDREN: CULTURAL CONFLICT IN THE CLASSROOM, Lisa Delpet, New Press, distributed by W.W. Norton & Company THE PRINCIPALSHIP: A REFLECTIVE PRACTICE PERSPECTIVE, Thomas J. Sergiovanni, 4th edition, Allyn and Bacon THE DREAMKEEPERS, Gloria lason-Billings, Jossey-Bass TEACHING: A CAREER, A PROFESSION, Mary Fortes Hayes and Isa Kaftal Zimmerman, editors, Massachusetts Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development Respond to these situations in writing as if you were the principal of an elementary, middle or high school. Response must be no longet than one page. Your response must demonstrate an understanding of the issues and how you would respond to it. You have received a letter from a parent who is angry about her child's placement for next year. She feels that her child is being separated from all her friends and that the other class has all the "bright" students in it. You have already discussed this with her, but she refuses to accept your decision and is threatening to take this matter to the superintendent. Write her a letter explaining what you intend to do and why, remembering not to be defensive. You and your faculty/department have just finished spending considerable time exploring a new math or reading program and you are now ready to submit a purchase order. You carefully allocated your budget in order to make this purchase possible. This meant denying other reasonable requests. You have been informed by the superintendent that there is an unexpected budget deficit and she has frozen the budget, thereby stopping all purchase orders. Write a memo to your staff explaining what has occured, the implications for your school and what, if anything, you feel you can do about this. A major racial incident (you define the incident) has occurred in your school. You know you need to speak to the staff and students about it and you need to write a letter to the community about what occurred. For this assignment, write the letter to the parent community making sure you include what you have already done with staff and students. A teacher in your school mishandled a student. The student was being disrespectful and the teacher lost her temper, grabbed the student, pulled him aside and yelled at him in front of the whole class. You have been told by the Director of Personnel that something would need to be written to be put in the teacher's file. Write the memo. On a separate paper, for each of the above write the beliefs (core values) that drove your decision (or the response), in order of priorities. FINAL PAPER For this paper, you will be expected to work in groups and draw upon everything you have learned in this course about instructional leadership. This includes: all of the reading, interviews you have done with principals and class discussions. In addition your paper must demonstrate an understanding of the following: Elmore, Richard F. "Structural Reform and Educational Practice," Educational Researcher, December 1995. Elmore, Richard F. "Teaching, Learning, and School Organization: Principles of Practice and the Regularities of Schooling," Educational Administration Quarterly, August 1995. Falk, Beverly. "Sitting Down to Score, Teacher Learning Through Assessment", Phi Delta Kappan, September 1998. Fink, Elaine and Resnick, Laureen, "Develooping Principals as Instructional Leaders". Phi Delta Kappan, April, 2001. Guiney, E., "Coaching Isn't Just for Athletes: The Role of Teacher Leaders," Phi Delta Kappan, June 2001, pp. 740-743 (Online Reserve - O'Neill) Hayes and Zimmerman, Teaching: A Career, a Profession. Hoerr, T., "Conegiality: A New Way to Define Instructional Leadership," Phi Delta Kappan, January 1996, pp. 380-381 (Online Reserve - O'Neill) Makibbin, Shirley and Marsha M. Sprague. "The Instructional Coach: A New Role in Instructional Improvement," Bulletin, February 1997. Mohr, N. and Dighter, A. "Building a Leadership Organization," Phi Delta Kappan, June 2001, pp. 744-747 (Online Reserve - O'Neill) Neuman, M. and W. Simmons, "Leadership for Student Learning," Phi Delta Kappan, September 2000, pp. 9-12 (Online Reserve - O'Neill) O'Neill, John, "On the New Standards Project: A Conversation with Lauren Resnick and Warren Simmons." Educational Leadership, February 1993. Resnick, L. and K. Nolan, "Standards for Education" In D. Ravitch (Ed.) Debating the Future of American Education: Do We Need National Standards and Assessment?, Brookings Institute. Rothman, R. "Organizing So All Children Can Learn: Applying the Principles of Learning". Schmoker, M. and R. Marzno, "Standards Based Education", Educational Leadership, March 1999. Terry, Paul. "The Principal and Instructional Leadership", Paper presented at NCPEA, 1996. Wiggins, Grant. "Curricular Coherence and Assessment: Making Sure That the Effect Matches the Intent", from Toward a Coherent Curriculum, J. Beane, Editor, ASCD, 1995. Each group will write a 7-10 page paper. The paper will assume that you are a principal of a school (you define the level) and you want to create a culture which reflects the belief that all children can learn at a rigorous level of achievement. Apply what you have learned from the course in general and from reading the above book and articles specifically to describe the instructional leadership you would provide to create that culture. What would the school culture look like? What would you as principal expect staff to be doing? What would you as principal do to create the culture? If the paper is well written and demonstrates your ability to synthesize what you have read and learned from the course and to apply that to instructional leadership at the school level, you will receive a grade of A- to A. If the paper is well written and demonstrates some level of understanding of instructional leadership and some ability to apply that to a school you will receive a grade of B- to B+. If the paper does neither of the above you will receive a grade of less than B-.
FIELD ASSIGNMENT Each student must complete a field assignment of 71/2 hours. The assignment can be completed in one of two ways. 1. If you are doing a practicum the assignment can be completed by adding 71`/2 hours to the practicum in which you engage in a leadership project which is reflected in your journal. 2. If you are not doing a practicum, you will need to spend 71/2 hours in a school working on a leadership project. The project should be reflected in your journal as a separate entry. 3. In either case, I will need to know the specific topic you will explore by 10/18/03.
REFLECTIVE JOURNAL Each student will keep a reflective journal that will be passed in at the end of the course. After each class, you should write a one page entry reflecting on what you learned and how that affected your thinking about the principalship. There will be no grade for the journal. Rather, the journal will provide the instructor with insight into the student's thinking about the principalship. Your final journal entry should reflect on how well your group worked when doing your final paper. What role did you play? Did everyone contribute? What did you learn? |