Art Of Teaching

• Taking staff Meetings in absence of School Head

I was always student oriented and result oriented and that is why considered a strict task master. I put a lot of vigor toward arranging resources for classroom teaching and reorganized classroom schedules to provide equal planning time and fair teaching duties through yearly and monthly planning. Many were unhappy with the planning and scheduling and went to complain secretly to the newly formed Management about the same. The Management had come with a biased mindset that I was loyal to the outgoing management. When I was on leave for a few days during December and as soon as I resumed duty, a teacher whom I considered loyal pulled me aside and told me that all staff had been invited to a staff meeting in my absence to discuss my leadership. Pre -planned theories about work load was discussed and they were directly told to stop the writing of log books and lesson plans. The instigator teachers were unhappy about new expectations for lesson planning and assessment. They had been with the school not from the beginning and wanted to safeguard an engrained culture of live and let live.

As a Management entity I would never indulge in a secret meeting bypassing the School Head and directly giving orders to the staff to commit insubordination towards the school head.

• Not Developing a Feedback Culture

A feedback culture is based on foundation of trust between the employer and employee. It is very necessary to hear to both sides of a story before arriving at any conclusion unless you are determined to be partial and protect the interest of a selected few close to you for personal benefits and vested interest and neglect the majority.

Here you fail as an administrator as you become self-centered, inhuman and full of selfish motives at the cost of the institution. This I would never indulge in as a management entity.

•  Not establishing structures to receive multiple feedbacks before arriving at a decision.

School heads often make the error of going to classrooms for formal observations to fulfil obligations of the duties of school head. But they forget that feedback is useful only when multiple stake holders are considered like students, parents and other teachers.

 It is especially important for leaders to pursue the diverse views of persons who disagree with them.  

• Not asking the right questions:

If you really seek genuine feedback, you must ask the right type of focused and specific questions instead of vague and open- ended ones.

          When you are speaking one-on-one with tutors, parents, public associates, or even students, the five basic level questions that will evoke productive reflections are:  

a] When was the last time you saw me impart something? What did you notice about my instruction?

b] What do you think I price most in teachers (e.g., organization, planning, engagement, high test scores)?

  c]What choices have I made that helped our school progress? What    choices have I made that you are upset with and why?

d]What one thing could I do to progress how we work with each other at this school?

e] What does our institute need most? What am I not paying attention to  that I should be?

• Flouting Government Sanctions:

If you have received a number sanction from the Education Department, make sure to follow it to the core. Because number sanctions are accorded depending on the number of students in your school or college. Being private institutions, your money comes from students’ fees. So never compromise on the same thinking that we are following Management orders and therefore they will save us if we are caught.

I would never as a school head flout any Government sanctions or notifications on the say of private managements. Even if they give in writing you have no right to flout orders of the government bodies. I have come across such happenings so writing.

• Playing with the jobs of teachers and their salary:

         Refrain from giving probationary appointments to staff if the number sanctions do not permit you to do so. You will ultimately have to take back  their probationary appointments if not supported by Government sanctions.

 This will lead to unnecessary litigations for yourself and the institute. Even if they have completed their tenure, you are liable for answering because  as Head you are supposed to take decisions with your signature and you   must refrain from doing so at the cost of staff and their salary.

           I say this from personal experience as two cases are still pending in  Secondary Section where I had to face court rooms for decisions of  Management. The cases are still going on.

• Not listening enough:

We often see that the Management and school Heads stop seeking feedback as they become over confident with time in their roles.  Even when we say we are democratic in our structure of running the school, we forget that we have to change with times. Leadership tends to become codified and moves towards hierarchy as the same faces and personalities are on the staff year after year.

We tend to assume that “this is how we do things here” and with that we stop looking for better ways. We forget that practices that were once innovative in our institution have now become conventions and we cannot continue doing the same with the changing and growing group of school students.

LAST BUT NOT THE LEAST –

You may feel that you are the best Management and the best school Head and staff and everything is going smoothly and well as there is no voice of dissent.

 But ask yourself, have you ever heard or tried to take feed back or tried to find out voices of dissent? The soft whispers of protest among your staff and students which you tend to dismiss as you have become complacent in your roles.

 My advice to Management and Heads of Private Schools – It is superlative to remember that feedback is not just the irritating reverberation of your individual augmented power of speech.

This is the most appropriate time to ask, how are my decisions and actions impacting the life of the school and student performance?  You need to ask the staff, the parents, the students the social community around your school how you are performing.

 Instead of blowing your own bugle of success, examining your own leadership is the first step to get yourself and your school associated with the vision you have chased or wish to chase in the future.

“Part of regaining my faculty’s trust was making the time to visit teachers’ classrooms informally at times when they didn’t have students, just to ask “how are things going” and to have a brief conversation about children, vacations, or good books. [ Anne Vilen in Education Week. Teacher]

Source – Google