There are many things I have learned through writing reflections for my classes. Understanding my feelings and how things have worked on my campus has definitely been one of the major benefits to writing reflections. I believe that using reflective practice can improve my leadership abilities and allow me to target ideas that did not work properly and begin to find ways to make them run smoothly.
During this school year, I realized how well collaboration worked. We had discussed collaboration and how much it impacted school leadership. This year, I am an Assistant Principal for a fourth and fifth grade campus and really want my teachers to work together and create a cohesive team for our school. As we started our planning process, we discussed lessons that had been taught previously and looked at different ways to improve the lesson and increase the rigor of the lesson. We also implemented common based assessments that are given each six weeks. These assessments allow us as a team to see where students have not mastered different objectives and where a break-down in our teaching could occur. These collaborative discussions gave us the opportunity to look at different activities that could be used during instruction and also help teachers become excited about teaching the material. This reflection helped our team realize if an activity worked or if it did not work for our students, which made teachers realize that certain activities were better than others and we must use ones that have been successful. We made use of the experience that many of our teachers had, but some of our teachers lacked.
As the year progressed, I also reflected on other aspects of our instruction. We implemented family nights with our campus to give parents strategies to help their child at home. The first family night went well, but time was an issue with transitioning between stations. By looking back at family night, we were able to tweak some of the activities so we could improve the overall structure of our family night. Reflecting on family night structure and practices has helped my campus improve the overall function of the night and helped us create an atmosphere where students and parents are able to learn many different things that will improve student learning.
As an administrator and future Superintendent, I can implement this collaborative culture where teachers and principals reflect on their present experiences and past experiences. Creating a team that can discuss their work and reflect on their student’s progress or campus’ progress will only enable our school district to become successful. I feel that using reflective practices as a leader can enhance my success as a leader and help me become a better leader. I feel that I can look back each day at the issues that I handled and reflect on how I dealt with the situation. Having this time to look back and really consider how my well my decisions affected the situation at hand will make me become a better superintendent and enable me to see my weaknesses. In doing this, I can improve these weak areas which will make me become a stronger leader. Reflecting on what happens each day will enable my campus and my school district to improve the instruction and delivery of the activities that are critical for student mastery. Improving on our instructional techniques and incorporating collaboration into the reflection will only allow us to improve our educational delivery. Having a school that supports collaboration and teachers and administrators who reflect on their daily activities will enhance the learning that occurs each day.
Reflecting on projects that I have completed throughout this coursework as well as through the internship, I have been able to project difficulties within the projects and find ways of improving it. Having the ability to reflect on these experiences has given me greater insight into making needed improvements within my school district that will enhance the education of all students. Also, I have been able to look back at the assessments that we have taken throughout this coursework and find areas that I need to review and understand before I can thoroughly master the concepts we have learned. Through this reflection, I have been able to remember different concepts that we have learned through looking back and reflecting on the assessments. These assessments have allowed me to find areas that I needed to improve upon and understand better. I have been able to look back and study different concepts that have helped me improve my knowledge of the curriculum.
Creating and collaborating through the use of our class blogs has also give me the opportunity to learn through collaboration. This superintendent course work has helped me build my professional network so that I can collaborate with other aspiring superintendents to create a district that is successful. Sharing ideas and reflections has helped me become a better leader and given me ways to improve things that I have implemented within my school district. Hearing others ideas and suggestions has also helped me become more open-minded and ready to discuss options for making improvements within my school district.
I plan to utilize reflections throughout my career as a tool for improving my skills. Through reflections, I can improve my capabilities of leading others by looking at myself and my actions in different situations. I can improve on my reactions to different problems and the way I decide to handle any given situation by closely reflecting on ways to improve my style of leadership and my decision-making skills. All in all, I can reflect back on things that are positive and things that I can improve upon in order to gain knowledge and improve my leadership ability.
I believe that having a leadership style that can adapt to the situation at hand will give me an edge on the situation. At my school, we do have a collaborative team and it is a great thing to be able to work together to accomplish set goals. I also believe the benefits of collaboration outweigh the cons. Reflective practice will enable teachers and administrators to become stronger and wiser educators and leaders.
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