Education, Administration it Has Been

Education, Administration

It has been a long time since teachers only spent time in their classrooms and with their students and rarely met with other staff members -- except for a quick bite to eat in the teachers' lunchroom.

These days, most educators spend many hours a week in meetings with individuals both internal and external to the school. First thing in the morning, the teacher may meet with a parent to discuss a particular problem. or, the teacher may get together with both a parent and a social worker or psychologist.

Regularly, teachers have team meetings with other staff members with whom they share goals or have school-wide meetings with administration. At night, they could be sitting down with a group of parents and teachers who are interested in expanding the curriculum in a particular area.

Such settings require leadership skills that were not necessarily needed in the past. The teacher may have had these abilities, but rarely used them or had no need to develop them. Now, all educators must either develop or hone their leadership skills. They are either going to be responsible for setting and running sessions of their own or be part of those planned by others and have to contribute their share to the determined goals.

It is no longer possible for educators to rely only on their past education or occasional teacher seminars. Teachers need to recognize that professional development is a lifelong process and a continual program of personal growth. This includes learning activities to enhance one's internal and external knowledge base. For internal growth, more learning is required on policy and procedures, curriculum development, technology use, collaboration and teamwork, and student special needs, as well as on one's personal field of subject interest -- all for the end goal of improving the school and teaching students more effectively. Externally, because of the speed of change, a teacher must keep abreast of current global affairs, trends in education and other programs that impact student learning. Today's teachers must take their leadership skills and their creative thoughts and ideas and begin to establish new ways of enhancing their schools and impacting reform. Increasingly, they will be in settings that will necessitate such abilities to be used.