Middle school open house as community leadership development

Open House Activity

Activity Description and Summary

The after school event that I participated in that reflects the ideals of educational leadership dealt with participating in my middle school's open house program. I represented the Social Studies Department for this event and informed the parents of the students of our activities within the department and how it relates to their education.

Program Outcome Rationale

This activity represented the program outcome of School and Community Leadership. This activity is built upon the following objectives:

Build strong community relations by modeling and promoting equity, fairness, and respect among faculty, staff, students, parents and community leaders.

Provide opportunities for stakeholders to develop and use skills in collaboration, shared decision making and responsibility for the purpose of maintaining a comprehensive program of positive home/school relationships.

Acknowledge and respect the goals, values, and aspirations of diverse family and community groups by engaging the support of business, philanthropic, political, social, and civic or faith-based organizations and other resources to enrich the school's climate, culture and diverse learning infrastructure.

Maintain a broad communication network throughout the school and community by using a wide variety of print and electronic media modes whiles establishing a high level of visibility and active involvement among stakeholders

Administrator on Duty

The role of the campus administrator is very challenging in an open house environment. This type of engagement allows the parents of the students to become more intimately familiar with the inner workings of the school. This is an important event because it demonstrates the principal's explicit leadership capabilities by merging school and community together face-to-face in such a powerful way.

Open houses do not require many extra resources and can be organized rather simply due to the nature of the event. School administrators, principal in this case, can stand to benefit from this event if it is aligned with school strategy and programs. On the other hand, a school's weaknesses will be exposed during this event as well, so it is necessary the open house is conducted in a professional manner.

The role of first impressions are important and the open house allows school leaders to impress upon the community their leadership abilities. "Most teachers have discovered that parents can be very powerful allies in any child's education -- from preschool up through twelfth grade. Keeping parents informed and inviting them to become part of the educational process can significantly influence any youngster's scholastic success. Teachers who take advantage of "parent power" are those who significantly multiply their teaching effectiveness." (Fredericks, 2005.)

The district policies towards these evens mandate that they are held on school grounds and after school hours. This event was held at 6 pm so that it could accommodate this rule. The stakeholders that benefited from this event included the students, parents, teachers and school leadership group. The teachers who attended the open house were selected on a volunteer basis.

Reflection

In all honesty I did not want to attend the open house as I had a social engagement that I wanted to attend instead. By forgoing my personal desires in this case and volunteering to represent the social studies department I demonstrate the leadership trait of excellence through dedication. The open house events that I have been a part of before often did not communicate any real message that was beneficial and I was biased towards a similar result.

During this open house I allowed myself to be more open to questions and criticisms that came from the parents. Instead of emotionally reacting, I used empathy to understand their concerns and approached their concerns with humility and care. This exercise was beneficial because it allowed me to demonstrate necessary educational leadership skills such as patience and understanding.