‘My Roles and Responsibilities as a Manager and Leader in My School”Principals are managers often known to administer teachers and other staffs work in schools.
Early childhood centre administration is itself often part of larger administration units. The conditions of teachers’ and staffs’ working life are influenced by the administration and leadership provided by principals, and it is widely assumed that school or centre leadership directly influences the effectiveness of teachers and the achievement outcomes of students. Principals often view leadership and management as two different roles, but the most effective principals know how to blend the two. “Principals are responsible for both leadership and management,” said Dr. Alvy, a former principal and professor in the department of education at Eastern Washington University. Successful principals learn to seamlessly blend their roles as managers and leaders and understand the importance of both tasks, according to professional educators and consultants. Many leaders view management responsibilities at a lower level or lower “rank” because they have little to do with vision, mission, culture building, and instructional supervision. But management goes hand-in-hand with leadership; many of the culture-building and culture-shaping aspects of the job are accomplished through combining leadership and management.
Regardless of the roles they assume, principal leaders shape the culture of their schools, improve student learning, and influence practice among teachers and their peers.The principal remains the central source of leadership and management influence as it can be seen that in recent decades, childhood centres nor schools have been restructuring traditional governance models and redefining leadership and management functions in ways that distribute decision-making authority more broadly and allow more teachers and other staff members to continue in their positions while also taking on more responsibility in the governance of a school by applying the concept of teacher autonomy which basically means professional independence to the degree when autonomous decisions can be made. Thence, the first and foremost matter taken into concern is how to lead and manage a vision of academic success for all students.
For instance, on what I have done is that I “monitor ” student dismissal hours as that is a responsibility that directly reflects as both management and leadership quality because as the principal, I’m making sure that the students are safe as they are leaving school and taking the opportunity to create bondage by talking with students, teachers, and school transporters about the day and important educational issues. Not only that, in assessing my skills as a manager and leader, I try my best to not separate the two roles due to its vitality. It is hard to determine a principal’s success in proclaiming a clear vision and mission of his or her job as it is focused on instructional leadership unless we have a target or standard to judge our performance. So, the vision that I foresee is to be about helping students succeed academically and as citizens, and helping staff develop as professionals with a common vision and mission about school and student success. Based on the vision and mission that is stated, I set high goals and meticulously assess whether the goals have been addressed during the year and made sure the goals are achieved by any pragmatic chances. Together with that, the emotional needs of the child are also taken into consideration. The main idea set in mind is that I need to build heart into the school plan and remember heart in the equation of learning.
On e of the actions that I have taken before is when I noticed a few months before graduation that certain kids were at risk of not graduating, I ordered the graduation robes early and took pictures of the kids in the robes, put them in frames, and gave them to the kids as this can be set as an inspiration for the kids or students to complete their education. Next, is cultivating leadership in others. A broad and longstanding consensus in leadership theory holds that leaders in all walks of life and all kinds of organizations, public and private, need to depend on others to accomplish the group’s purpose and need to encourage the development of leadership across the organization. Early childhood centres are no different. Principals who get high marks from teachers for creating a strong climate for instruction in their schools also receive higher marks than other principals for spurring leadership in the management. Principals definitely play a major role in developing a “professional community” of teachers who guide one another in improving instruction.
In fact, if test scores are any indication, the more willing principals are to spread leadership around, the better for the students. For this reason I always act as a “learning facilitator” or “instructional coach” whereby I help both new and veteran teachers develop stronger lesson plans, improve their instruction or classroom-management techniques, or acquire new professional skills, such as using new learning digital and online technologies as well as guiding other teachers in collecting, understanding, analysing, and interpreting student-achievement data, as well as using those findings to improve instructional efficacy in a subject area or throughout the school. In distinction with that, I also engage students in efforts to improve their school, district, or community using community-based-learning strategies and projects and serve as a parent liaison or lead other efforts to help parents and community members become more engaged in what’s happening in the school. Other manoeuvres taken in concern are being involved in local, state, or national advocacy groups aimed at improving education or social conditions for children and communities, develop partnerships with non-profits, community organizations, and local businesses that bring in additional resources and create new learning opportunities in a school, such as an internship program or a dual-enrolment program and also lead an action-research project or engage in additional study and research projects to grow professionally and enhance their professional contributions to the school. To sum up, this simply means I act as a resource provider by sharing instructional resources, resemble to be an instructional specialist by helping teachers to implement effective teaching strategies and also being a curriculum specialist by understanding content standards of early childhood centres.Besides that, is being precised in managing time and data.
A simple way to maximize learning time is by observing how effectively teachers use the first five minutes of class time, as Dr. Alvy had mentioned, “Look at how the first five minutes of class goes. If you lose five minutes a day, that’s 15 hours of instructional time a year.”. Therefore, realising these consequences, I often spend my time to pick up examples of student work as I walk around the centre building, more of like a visitation to the classrooms. So, whenever I go visiting the classrooms, I will have note cards with every teachers’ name on them and would mark the date I visited the classrooms and what the teacher was doing. Together with that, as I walk around the building, I would also jot down maintenance problems and give them to my secretary, who would call up the custodian.
The secretary then passes on the cards to the custodian and does the repair and thus gets signed by me upon fixation of any sort of maintenance problem. This is done to ensure that the centre has adequate infrastructure and are in good conditions. Well, to me, one of the most valuable management tools is data and never will I fail to remember to put the data in context. I make sure to take decisions based on research as it acts as a concrete reference to avoid unwanted errors to be done. I have always considered what do on a daily basis to improve student achievement. To successfully use data, I portray the best to combine my leadership and management roles to scrutinize the most valuable data sources given contextual realities and perceptions so that I can make decisions and act in the best interests of kids or students, teachers, and the centre itself. Not only that, in reviewing student referrals, one thing that always had triggered me is that kids only were referred to the office for negative reasons but I brought in a new policy whereby kids were also referred for good things as well.
This indeed had changed the climate of the childhood management and centre. The school or centre leader ( principal ) pressing for high academic standards would, for example, map out rigorous targets for improvements in learning (planning), get the faculty on board to do what’s necessary to meet those targets (implementing), encourage students and teachers in meeting the goals (supporting), challenge low expectations and low district funding for students with special needs (advocating), make sure families are aware of the learning goals (communicating), and keep on top of test results (monitoring). In conjunction with that too, to help manage my time as the principal of the early childhood centre, I try my best to follow a specific management matrix as it suggests dividing tasks into categories urgent and important, urgent and not important, not urgent and important, not urgent and not important. Hence, I’m able to organize and execute around priorities of the centre. To conclude, taking the time to walk through the school is actually a strategy that helps to keep an eye on the management which indirectly helps to cover up the data and obtain relevant facts and figures as well as being a person who is able to manage the time horizon. Last but not least, being a catalyst for change and reflecting them. Principals can also be the catalysts for a change to take place, visionaries who are “never content with the status quo but rather always looking for a better way”. When I take on the catalyst role, I feel extremely secured in my own work and have a strong commitment to continual improvement.
It poses questions to generate analysis of student learning. Not only that, by being a change catalyst, I’m able to set a good role model to my peers as well as increasing the creditability of the centre management. Into the bargain, this would definitely reflect a good reputation of the management. However, many principals would say that reflecting on their job and what they do is a luxury they can’t afford but it is critical to being good leader-managers, because reflection deepens learning perspectives. As an example of the value of reflection, a principal that realises that kids referred for fighting were being teased about body odour.
The principal did some research and learned that the students reported for fighting were receiving free or reduced-price lunches and thought the families might not be able to afford certain hygiene products. The principal asked people who travelled to collect the soap and shampoo hotels leave in the rooms and donate them to the school. The principal made it known to the students that the supplies were available. For principals who say they cannot find time to reflect, it something to be sympathized about with their frustration and time management constraints. For this reason, I never fail to take note that I need to remember that there are days in which the best plans go awry, that is basically just a part of the job. The daily surprises are a reality, thus, it is essential to focus on the mission and vision. The mission and vision serve as a compass to guide one over and around the hurdles that occur each day.
Principals also should provide opportunities to build trust, collaboration, and individual and organizational capacity, as well as employ celebrations to call attention to treasured school values. This is something that I have brought to contemplation as they play a vital role to maintain and level up the performance of our respective childhood centre.To sum up everything, principal assume a wide range of roles to support school, teachers, staffs and students’ successes.
Whether these roles are assigned formally or shared informally, they build the entire school’s capacity to improve. Because principal can lead in a variety of ways where they serve as leaders among their peers. In highly successful environments, efforts have been made to make it possible for principals to be successful.
That means making sure that they have the instructional resources they need – textbooks and other tools of learning. Respecting the opportunities for principal to be efficacious in their teaching by giving them the opportunities, the tools and the relationship time with students to be able to be successful is very important. So, in order for all these aspects to go on smoothly, the mentioned managerial and leadership qualities are supreme basic qualifications needed to run the whole management.
