A case study analysis of "The school and community"
The case study presents the experience of a new principal managing a school in a rural farming community with 1200 people of low socioeconomic status residing. The case study describes where the school is located. The district serves about 1,100 students—500 in the elementary school, 240 in the middle school, 350 in the high school. These students are not necessarily from the community itself. The case study also narrates the first days of the principal in the school and the changes that she instituted in the school.
For the first year, the new principal watched and evaluated what is going on, making only small changes in the school and its faculty’s routine and way of doing things. During this first year, the principal focused on curtailing, disciplining and controlling the behavior of students through the faculty and the student council. During this year also, the secretary had taken a leave off work because of suspicion of a cancer and thus she needs to be medically diagnosed and treated.
During the principal’s second year of school, the secretary has passed away and this has set the tone of the whole school year. There was not much event and projects to speak off. Student issues like drinking and alleged sex placed pressure on the principal and the school. The principal also planned for the new high stakes test to be given to juniors and arranged career awareness field trips.
The third year in school of the principal is again besieged by student behavior problems, among them the possession of handguns. This incident had continued to as far as the suspension of students and a threat from the father of one suspended boy aimed at the principal. Meanwhile, the superintendent has publicly announced that the district is $500,000 in deficit for the coming year, based on a $5 million budget. Public forums are held to try to devise a plan for maintaining the district on such a drastically reduced budget. The principal informally approaches the principals of the surrounding schools (during an athletic conference meeting) to see if there was room among them for her students in case the school had to close. Throughout the year the principal has proactively solicited funding to allow faculty and board members to attend conferences that explore innovations for improving student achievement.
In the fourth year, a new superintendent is hired for the school who later during the school year earned the criticism of the entire school community. His abrupt manner offends teachers as he questions their actions and the rationale for those actions. He pushes his own tested agendas for improving student achievement. Other activities go on normally for the year. The “highlight” of the end of the school was the trip to England which had been sponsored by one of the teachers.
During the fifth year of the principal in the school, it began without a contract; teachers across the district were openly ominous. The refused to do extra duty, skipped faculty meetings, did not acknowledge the principal. There was also a noted increase in drug trafficking on the buses and at school. Several times during this year “The Sewer,” photocopied ‘newspaper,’ openly slandered and criticized the principal and the superintendent for their roles in the teachers having no contract. By the time spring break arrived, the principal was ill and ordered by her doctor to take a leave. Each day was a struggle to get through—teachers were openly hostile and demonstrated no respect, there was little support for school improvement efforts. There was no sense of community. The principal took five days vacation and returned to be told by the superintendent that the board did not want to extend her contract beyond the coming year. During spring break, she quietly cleaned out her office, and left to nurse herself back to health.
The case study is an example of a principal leading a worst-case scenario school. With the principal gone, the superintendent no longer had enough support to implement block scheduling. It has to be remembered that this superintendent is also openly criticized by other members of the community. The superintendent’s contract was bought-out by the board before the end of his fifth year. According to sources in the community, the only touch of the principal that remains in the high school is the breakfast break. The current principal attempts to eliminate it from the schedule, and often uses it as a punishment for student misbehavior—depriving the entire student body of their breakfast when they have “been bad.”
For all her efforts, the former principal indeed did her best for the school. Many components of her programs and initiatives are consistent with the best practices of leadership development. It is just sad that she happened to be in a community wherein there is little or almost no cooperation and respect between its dwellers, giving little room for improvement no matter how hard the principal worked. As the former secretary warned the principal, disciplining one student will likely offend half of the population. For initiatives to succeed within a community, there must be unity of its dwellers; however, this unity should be in the right place. In the case study, the community members do not seem to welcome the change for the good implemented by the principal. And although the principal could be given credit for doing what is best, she still lacks the quality of an effective leader which is to inspire others to want a change and strive for a common goal.
While increased levels of government and private support have facilitated the introduction in a number of rural communities of a variety of school-community linkages, research suggests that leadership plays a central role in ensuring the sustainability of such linkages (Johns et al., 1999). Leadership is viewed as a process of building relationships of mutual obligation and trust across community sectors, in such a way as to "enable" a wider group of community members to participate in the leadership process (Falk & Kilpatrick, 2000).
Research notes that active relationships, which involve interactions that cross role boundaries, such as interactions between the school institution and the business institution, have the greatest potential for sustainable community development (Lane & Dorfman, 1997). The product of these interactions is social capital, which can influence the social, civic or economic well-being of a community (Falk & Kilpatrick, 2000). Therefore, leadership which focuses on building social capital is a key factor in sustainable community development
The locals in the community could be described as "eclectic" because of the diverse backgrounds, lifestyles and values of its population, including dairy farmers, viticulturalists, professionals such as school teaching staff, local small business owners and operators, environmentalists and alternative lifestylers, and the unemployed. Because of this diversity, conflict is inevitable; however, one of the community's strengths is the way in which many of these conflicts are managed and resolved through dialogue (Mulford, 2001).
While the school had enjoyed parental participation for a number of years, community members would definitely want a greater say in decision-making relating to crucial areas such as policy and curriculum. School leadership should also support the involvement of community members in school decision-making. The catalyst for community involvement was conflict over inadequate parental consultation regarding a proposed change to the school policies.
Furthermore, recommendations on sustaining small high schools in rural communities should also be directed at superintendents, though superintendents should be aware of the responsibilities that community members and policymakers also bear for the success of these schools. Rural schools are more sustainable if the district leadership generally gives priority to the local community, according to the superintendents interviewed in study (Howley, 2003). When the community is usually ignored, leaders can't access the support rural communities want to give their schools. Lacking this perspective as well, district leadership becomes vulnerable to the forces of consolidation and closure, accepting arguments that communities are too sentimental about their schools
The management recipes in the literature usually apply to selected aspects of specific situations whereas the problems faced daily by practitioners always seem far more complex (Duignan & McPherson, 1992). Indeed, management techniques are often of little help when a leader has to choose between competing values. When it comes to solving new types of problems in education, it usually means creating new types of understandings. To add to the confusion, the political, economic and social contexts of education continue to change rapidly.
As could be applied to other industries, educative leadership should not just focus on the traditional elements of leadership emphasized in the literature of educational administration, namely, attitudes, styles and behaviors. Instead, it is preferred to be concerned with ways of knowing organizations and ways of leading that find expression in the cultural norms of the group, the educational organization or the system. Organizations are not seen as natural phenomena; instead, they are seen as cultures, that is, the concerted imaginations of organized people who share assumptions, values, interpretations of their situation and meanings that they give to their actions (Duignan & MacPherson, 1992).
The implications for leadership are therefore clear. Leadership involves getting things done through people, in this case study through students and people in the community. Working through people involves communication, team-building, and motivational skills, among other capacities. Beginning' leaders tend to go through the motions and to emphasize skills rather than strategy in much the same way that a beginning reader struggles with letter sounds and syntax. Skilled leaders, on the other hand, construe their activity more broadly. In essence, the skill of leadership lies more in the thought behind the leader's actions than in the actions themselves. The principal in the case study may have failed to realize her efforts because of lack of actions on her part. She may therefore need further training and education regarding leadership roles and responsibilities. However, given the state of her health, it was also a wise decision to just let her recuperate.
0 comments:
Post a Comment