Shape: Two-dimensional area

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The Artist's View:

    A shape is a two-dimensional area that is defined in some certain way. By drawing an outline of a circle on a piece of paper, one has created a shape. By painting a solid red square, one has also created a shape. Shapes may be either free-formed or geometric. Free-form shapes are uneven and irregular and usually promote a pleasant and soothing feeling. Geometric shapes on the other hand are stiff and uniform and generally suggest organization and management with little or no emotion. Shape tends to appeal more to viewers' minds rather than to their emotions.

    ISLLC Standard #3: A school administrator is an educational leader who promotes the success of all students by ensuring management of the organization, operations, and resources for a safe, efficient, and effective learning environment.

    A Leadership Perspective:
    Schools have a shape, a smell, a look, a feel. As we imagine our elementary school days, we create physical images that capture our learning experiences. Similarly, as we walk into the elementary school just before lunch to smell the bread cooking in the dining hall, we are taken back to some of our favorite (or maybe not so favorite) memories of schooling. Whatever the quality of those memories, they are certainly vivid. We watch the big yellow school bus traveling down the road and wonder about the children in that lovely “monster” of a vehicle. These images are not about instruction. They are about the other things that inform our memories and have deeply affected our lives. Even though they are not instruction, they are important to the successful school. They are the shape of schooling.

    Management is the shape of schools. We manage budgets, discipline, community relations, and personnel. These are not the things that should be our focus in schools but they are exactly the matters with which we must deal so that we might teach children. And, the degree to which a leader can handle aspects of time management, scheduling, random but daily details, personnel management, parent conferencing, and community relations will determine the level of success for the students at that school. Of the management details, supervision of personnel is the most rewarding, demanding, and exhausting. Successful leaders find ways to be instructional leaders by offering supervision, staff development, remediation, and when necessary termination. But during the whole process of management, leaders struggle to balance being compassionate and supportive with being clinical and direct with personnel. Both sets of skills are necessary, but it is the rare leader who can do them both well. Effective leaders understand how to shape the modes of management to support the business of student learning.

    Recently, while involved in staff development for assistant principals, it became clear to the author that the systemic configuration in the schools inhibited, or prohibited, the proper application of leadership functions. Put bluntly, school leadership has assumed so many different roles in the building that some leaders felt they were not doing any of the jobs very well. In fact, based on recent research with practicing assistant principals (Kelehear, 2005) the author and participants reconstructed the leadership position so that myriad responsibilities might be separated into two categories, for two different positions. Instead of one position in charge of both management and leadership, there would be the Manager of Programs (MP) for administration and the Instructional Leader (IL) for instructional supervision. Being in charge in today's schools continues to be a daunting task. Given the competing demands of federal mandates, state assessments, standardized-testing schedules, shrinking revenue streams, and the like, it is no small wonder that children and teaching somehow get lost in the shuffle.

    It is clear from the literature (Sergiovanni, 1999; Smith & Piele, 1989; Glickman, Gordon, & Ross-Gordon, 2004; Sergiovanni & Starratt, 2002; Fullan, 2001; Starratt, 2004; Robbins & Alvy, 2003) that principals are called upon to do a myriad of jobs. It is a challenging task for principals to offer instructional leadership and also manage the other competing responsibilities. In much the same way as a teacher must be a successful manager of classroom behavior in order to be able to teach, the school leader must be able to manage the school so that instruction can take place. But to ask one person to manage all the business of schooling and also to conduct instructional supervision might be an unrealistic expectation. In working with 14 administrators, the author began to imagine that by separating the instructional supervision function from the principal's responsibility, then maybe another teacher leader could more fully supervise instruction in our schools (Kelehear, 2005). The role of instructional supervision would rest with someone whose primary responsibility was instructional development. Managing all other affairs of schooling such as budgets, parent conferences, and discipline would reside with the principal's position. The Manager of Programs (MP) was responsible for all matters of school governance and management with the exception of instructional leadership.

    The Instructional Leader (IL) would conduct all instructional programs relative to evaluation, supervision, induction, remediation, and instructional staff development. This job would carry with it a supervisory supplement that would recognize the lead teacher's supervisory responsibilities. The school would have an instructional committee whose responsibility it would be to select an IL who may or may not be a member of the committee. The IL's appointment would be 3 years. The IL would function as a part of the instructional committee but leadership within the committee would reside with a different person. One way to imagine the organization is to imagine an elected school board with an appointed superintendent. The committee will have representatives from grade levels for elementary schools or from subject areas for high schools. Middle schools would have instructional committees drawn from teams.

    For matters relative to evaluation, the IL would have the primary responsibility for making “judgments concerning the overall quality of the teacher's performance and the teacher's competence in carrying out assigned duties as well as provide a picture of the quality of teaching performances across the professional staff” (Nolan, 2003). These data will be collected as part of the teacher's overall evaluation in terms of retention, tenure, and promotion. The actual process for making employment decisions is described later in this paper.

    Within the context of supervision, the goal of the IL is to offer instructional support for teachers through-out their professional career paths. Novice teachers might receive close-ordered coaching to help through the stresses of being new to the profession. Tenured teachers might receive support in the form of instructional development and experimentation. End-of-career teachers might receive requests from the IL to share expertise with others or to take on staff development responsibilities. At whatever the career stage, the nature of the instructional support will be in the form of developmental supervision or mentoring.

    Research on mentoring emphasizes that the direction and content of instructional development is a shared responsibility of both the novice teacher and mentor teacher (Glickman, 2002; Reiman, 1999; Reiman & Theis-Sprinthall, 1993). Through collaboration and coaching the pair of teachers observe each other, share reflections on experiences, and develop professional development plans. Although during the early stages of the professional relationship, the mentor will likely assume a dominate role; over time the nature of the relationship will shift responsibilities from the mentor to novice (Gray & Gray, 1985).

    A key function of the IL is to identify, develop, and supervise a cadre of successful teachers who are trained in developmental supervision and mentoring. The IL will be the lead mentor and will offer support and guidance to the cadre and will also substitute in cadre classes when the mentor is conducting observations or conferences. Each mentor will provide reports to the IL regarding dates of mentor contacts, the nature of the observation, and any issues that the IL might need to address. Because of the need for confidentiality and trust in the mentoring relationship, care will be given not to offer specific details of the mentor's contacts. The mentor's contacts will be formative in nature. Differently, the IL will conduct summative observations and evaluations of teachers for employment decisions. The IL will offer summary reports and recommendations to the MP and those reports would become a part of the teacher's personnel file. The MP will also make recommendations, again for inclusion in the personnel file, for employment based on teachers' performances of non-instructional responsibilities (e.g., bus duty, lunchroom supervision, committee participation, attendance). The instructional committee will receive recommendations and will offer its recommendation for employment as well. In effect, employment decisions then come upon a three-vote decision: one vote from the IL, one vote from the MP and one vote from the instructional committee. Based on the three reports, the MP will construct a letter to the Director of Personnel that summarizes the findings and will offer a recommendation regarding the continuing employment status of the teacher. Both the MP and the IL will sign the letter. Any disputes or dissenting opinions will also be submitted, as attachment, to the Director of Personnel for inclusion in the personnel file.

    Although the IL would be responsible for the personnel evaluation component, the instructional committee and mentors would engage in supervision exclusively. The group based the distinctions of what constitutes evaluation vs. supervision on Nolan's (2003) work. According to Nolan, the natures of evaluation and supervision are fundamentally and critically distinct within various functions of the teaching experience [See Table 4.2). Given a particular dimension, the distinctions between evaluation and supervision become clear.

    It is in the form of mentoring as a supervisory practice that some of the more powerful benefits for teacher growth and development seem to emerge (Reiman 1999; Glickman, 2002; Pajak, 2002). Individuals who have a trained mentor are more likely to realize professional and personal growth than those who work alone (Vygotsky, 1986). This benefit is especially noticeable when teachers are in new assignments or in new settings. Whether we are speaking about new doctors, new teachers, new administrators, or new professors, a supportive colleague can help a novice move to higher levels of effectiveness. Writing about medical school novices, Rabatin et al. (2004) noted that a “mentoring model stressing safety, intimacy, honesty, setting of high standards, praxis, and detailed planning and feedback was associated with mentee excitement, personal and professional growth and development, concrete accomplishments, and a commitment to teaching” (p. 569).

    For public school teachers having a mentor is associated with professional growth and a sense of self-efficacy for both novices and experienced teachers. In working with veteran teachers, Reiman and Peace (2002) sought to “encourage new social role-taking, support new learning in effective teaching, encourage new complex performances in coaching and support conferences, and promote gains in moral and conceptual reasoning. Significant positive gains in learning, performance, and moral judgment reasoning were achieved” (p. 597). Mentoring had a bidirectional benefit for both novice and mentor. The best plan for supporting instruction will require a position that is wholly, and singularly, focused on the processes of teacher development.

    As a benefit to school cultures, mentoring in a developmental supervision model encourages conversation among teachers. In conversation we begin creating a school community characterized by sharing, supporting, and caring. It has become clear through research of Noddings (2002), Palmer (1998), Starratt (1997), and others that when teachers and students work in a caring and supportive atmosphere, they are more likely to take risks, experiment, and attend to each other's needs. It is just this type of collaboration that the process of mentoring can encourage.