Dr. Kirk introduced us to a variety of leadership styles and strategies throughout Administrative Leadership in Education Institutions. Some styles and theories I connected with more than others, but the constant challenge to leadership styles that I felt I had witness work in my life helped me to refine my own thoughts and views on what truly worked – and more importantly, what works for me specifically. I came to the conclusion that there are a huge diversity of effective leadership styles and that much of what will work or not work is driven by who the leader is, who they are trying to lead, and what the surrounding circumstances are. There are some nearly-universal truths about leaders, but given such a diverse array of effective leaders from drastically different backgrounds it is only reasonable to conclude that many different approaches can produce the intended results.
I really benefited in this course from exchanging ideas about leadership with people who had much more experience in leadership positions than I did. This exchange became pretty one-sided when it came to discussing leadership experience specific to educational settings, but no one seemed to mind that I got to benefit from the discussion a disproportional amount. As a direct result from these discussions I think I’m a much better “follower” or “team player” than I was before in some cases specific to my role as a teacher on a staff.
I chose to highlight two different artifacts from this course. The first of which is a youtube video that describes my thoughts and beliefs on leadership at the conclusion of the course. Making the video certainly stretched my technical abilities, but I the end result is actually one of my personal highlights from my whole M. Ed experience.
The second artifact that really influenced me from this course is the major paper I wrote around the thesis that we as a society desperately need a course in personal finance education in the high school curriculum offerings. I’ve subsequently taken a great interest in this area and developed an approved SIC around the topic. We hope to see a personal finance option come out as part of the new business curriculum in the next year.
01:755 Administrative Leadership in Educational Institutions