[Ous-lp-rp13] EDAD 6020, Answer to Question # 2

    Matney, Mary mm933108 at ohio.edu
    Thu Jun 14 22:59:41 EDT 2018 
    My school is currently an authoritarian, loosely coupled with a professional structure within the district. We have an administrator who is in his first year as principal, and the transition has been interesting, to say the least. Power most certainly flows from the top to bottom, and the superior has the last say always—and we are reminded quite frequently of this. There are rules and regulations in place, and they are followed very closely. There are not many special considerations when it comes to these rules and regulations. Everything from lesson planning to communication with parents is logged or collected in some manner. However, with that said, we are given certain professional consideration, by the district and superintendent(s), when making substantial decisions.



For example, we have two elementary buildings, one middle school, and one high school in our district. This year our reading series was up for renewal, and literally none of our schools could come to an agreement on which series we wanted. We had several sit-down, town-hall type meetings which were open to all staff in the district to attend where we could professionally address our concerns. We met with reps from each of the publishing companies to personally view and experience the program. Once all the meetings were held, and we felt we were given enough evidence for each program, we could vote for which series we liked best. We thought, naturally, that the highest vote would win—however, our superintendent decided to give us, each school, what we voted for; this means each school is using a different reading series. This impacted how I viewed him because I felt heard and appreciated, as I know teachers from each building felt. It made me feel, as a professional educator, that I was being given the respect I have worked so hard for as the classroom teacher who uses these resources day in and day out. It is not lost on me that this could backfire on one of our schools: inevitably whichever school scores poorly on the report card is going to of course be blamed for choosing the wrong reading series. However, my hope is that it works in each of our favors and we will be given more professional courtesies such as this small victory.


Another way my school, and the rest of the schools in my district, function as a professional structure is the way we approach academics and behavior. We have committees, comprised of teachers and administrators, which are committed to making data driven decisions to improve performance and behavior. The grade-level representatives collect data from their team and report it to the committee for a monthly review. The committee then uses the data collected to make joint decisions about school-wide behavior plans, and academic goals. For the most part, we make the decisions together, and our professional opinions are accepted.
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