Tim Coleman
Final Program Reflective Evaluation
May 3, 2011
The past last two years have been an amazing period of
growth for me as a teacher and as an administrator. When I first applied to the MSSL program at
Baker, I believed that I already possessed many of the skills and knowledge to
be an administrator and that the program was most likely going to provide me
with: legitimization of what I already knew, some additional background
structure to administrative duties, and readiness to take the administrative
licensure exam. These expectations, in
hindsight, are presumptuous, ignorant, and offensive. I knew only the bare bones of what an
administrator could do in a building and I realized that what I did know was
limited to certain components I had firsthand experience with or that directly
influenced my room as a classroom teacher.
The research, the professor life experiences, the reading materials, the
Directed Field Experience, the continued work that mirrored what an
administrator would do these were opportunities I desperately needed and was
provided. In addition, this always
included the effort to stay aligned to real-world learning that would one day
place me into a building with the leadership knowledge, skills, experiences,
and dispositions of a principal.
I have always wanted leadership opportunities and to
be a leader, though I often felt people around me did not necessarily view me
as a leader even when I had the experience and the knowledge to take on the
role effectively. Over time I saw that
certain personal characteristics were preventing me from naturally taking on
these responsibilities: the way I approached conversations, the quality and
type of information I contributed, and the perspective I brought to a group. It was especially this last piece that I now
see was the most underdeveloped. At
Baker I began to see that, even when approaching administrative decision making
moments, I was still myopically oriented towards a regular classroom teacher’s
viewpoints. As such, my suggestions
often contained too little information, only solved an issue for me, and did
not take into account the many other people that should be involved in the
discussion, let alone implementation and stakeholder buy-in. Whether intentional or not, the people I
interacted with before Baker accurately assessed my ability level and gave me
the relative respect I deserved.
While at Baker I spent the predominant amount of time
engaged in activities, projects, and discussions that worked to build a wider
vantage point in terms of administrative roles.
During my first year at Baker this resulted in more people at my
elementary school noticing my knowledge level increasing and my ability to
understand building level decisions and actions better. Such events were expected to occur when going
through Baker’s MSSL program. However,
the revelation took place just this past year, my second in the program. During this time I had completed most of my
courses and was beginning my Directed Field Experience. It was normal for me to share some of my
learning with my grade level teammates.
As the year progressed they began to comment on how different my entire
persona was in the school. A few close teachers offered authentic, unsolicited
praise for my handling of roles within the building where I served as an
administrator intern.
I also completed several
shadowing placements at different schools and grade levels. So many attributes of the district came into
clarity during this time. I understood
the overall structure of the district and the elaborate duties of a
principal. I saw how certain
characteristics of mine could be recognized and brought out as a leadership
vision. I knew how to do many things as
a principal not because I had seen another principal do them and I was blindly
mimicking them, but because I closely observed leadership styles and actions,
studied results, and compared what I witnessed to what I knew from class
readings and professional research.
The habit of reading research and relevant information
in professional journals, literature, conferences, and major news outlets
became the bedrock of much of my decision making process. A principal at an elementary school I
interned at introduced me to the Marshall Memo - a bulleted synopsis of various
articles and research findings collected from many sources by a retired educator
who worked as a designated reader for people subscribing to the Marshall
Memo. In five weeks I had read more
relevant research than I had in the previous five years. As a matter of routine I began sharing
research articles and journal pieces with teachers I knew were dealing with
related issues, citing research and sending out information I thought might
help the teacher.
When you have such a resource as your hands and you
find the last few years of experiences and learning to be coalescing, there are
moments and even days when you fully live the administrative role. From the entry into the building you walk
with confidence and feel that this is a world you understand and can positively
have an impact in endless ways. A
seemingly unnerving array of situations might be presented to you at any moment
and you feel you could handle them with thoughtful action. There are dozens of informal conversations
during the day in which you offer help, advice, or solve a problem for someone
in the building, teacher or student. You
meet with your current principal and discuss items that affect the whole school
and your participation is seen as a peer-to-peer quality. You know the names of hundreds of students
and just as many parents and have a mental database of relevant information
that you can reference when stopping in the halls to talk with them. Pictures of students at Wildwood for the 6th
grade team, behavior interventions and assistance for a students with intensive behavior struggles, two parents in the hall needing information on
third grade’s planned Kansas City field trip, and the office asking if you
might be available to meet an opera group at the receiving doors who need
direction as to where their gear can be loaded and “do you possibly have a few
students we could invite to be part of our performance in 30 minutes?” Of course!
Plan time is time to work the building and be a fluid administrator
making time to be the lifeblood of the school.
From
Baker I gained this confidence and exceptional organizational skills. I began to develop process improvements in my
teaching and in my administrative/leadership roles. I initiated extensive paper and digital file
mapping, maintenance, systemic structuring, and procedural efficiencies of
routine actions or steps regarding the material I had collected during Baker
classes and my own research materials.
The study of highly effective people led me to completion strategies,
delineation of process components, prioritization, and elimination of
non-relevant information, steps, and goals.
I actively sought out new information and was always incorporating it
into the repository I have built.
Looking
towards the next few years, my plans are to continue the expansion of my
experience and responsibility within education towards the goal of becoming an
elementary principal. I have had
tremendously enriching years in Shawnee Mission, as a student and as a teacher,
though throughout my years in education I have identified a continual process
of ever-widening appreciation, concern, and desire to have a wider influence on
students beyond my classroom walls. At
times I have found collaborative opportunities or inspired staff to implement
new methods or approaches to curriculum.
However, there is always a peripheral frustration that I may only affect
the lives of the 20 or so children in my own classroom. From district mentors, educational research,
and numerous Baker administrative classes, I see how the educator I have become
naturally grows to be the principal I want to be.
A
pivotal component of the principal I want to be is a realization and drive to
always be finding ways to set high expectations for student achievement. To adapt my behavior to the needs of the
current situation and be comfortable with dissent. In a school environment in which the
expectation is to accept children dealing with an endless array of real-life
circumstances, the ability to adapt one’s leadership style without sacrificing
one’s integrity is paramount. This
flexibility is a component of my daily personal interactions, instructions, and
management. As a principal, I do not
want to approach every situation in the school with an identical set of
standards and actions, but appraise each situation and provide a consistent
leadership style that will successfully apply to the given situation.
The
person I am today has been unequivocally shaped by individuals in the
classrooms of my education, from elementary school to Baker University. I have benefitted from dozens
of teachers and administrators who spent many hours talking with me,
working with me, encouraging me, cajoling me, and even outright confronting my
self-enabled struggles when they knew I was manufacturing excuses or not giving
my best effort. Building from the
foundational elements instilled in me by educators, I have become a dynamic,
intelligent, caring, humorous, and compassionate educator who receives
continual recognition from parents and the district for the work I do with all
kids, especially those with exceptionalities.
It seems natural and right for me to now raise the level of my reinvestment
in education as an administrator. I see
the character of the Baker as having seeded a fertile ground that will enable
me to guide teachers and students as an exceptional administrator.
