[Ous-lp-rp13] EDAD 6020; Response to Question #2

[Bruce, Brandy]

Saretta,

I love that your principal communicates so much with you. There is nothing that stresses me out more than finding out about an important meeting or event with little to no notice. Open communication is an important aspect of being an effective administrator. If you do not have good communication with your staff then you could run into major problems. I also am glad to hear that your principal values your opinion and trusts your judgement when it comes to making important decisions about your students. When I worked as a preschool teacher my administrator always overruled my opinions and decisions mostly just because she could and not because she was right or doing what was best for the child. It sounds like you have a great principal and that he runs a "smooth sailing" school.

________________________________________________________________________________________

I am going to begin with the structure that my school least resembles.  My school least resembles a chaotic system.  At the beginning of the year, handed out with all of our paperwork, is the district calendar.  This calendar has all the important dates noted for each separate building.  This calendar is also given to every student in our district on their first day of school.  This keeps all parents informed of any building functions.  My building’s vice principal emails a monthly calendar of events to all faculty and staff, informing us of any upcoming events.  He also prints a monthly newsletter to be handed out to all our students.  Our principal meets with us weekly in the form of TBT meetings.  These meetings are two fold, in that our principal is able to keep us informed of any changes that may be implemented, and we report any data that we have collected as a grade level.  This keeps our principal informed from the perspective of the faculty.  Our building and district is run off a handbook that is given out to students district wide.  We are all aware of all the rules and regulations of the school.

My school most resembles a professional structure loosely coupled with an authoritarian structure.  Our administrator treats us as professionals.  I say loosely coupled with authoritarian, because the major decisions concerning the building are, ultimately, decided by the administration.  I do feel that the voices of the faculty and staff are heard and taken into consideration while these decisions are made.  During our weekly TBT meetings our administrator will open up the meeting to answer any of our questions and listen to our concerns.  I also feel that our building is a professional structure, because our administrator respects our professional opinion.  For example, a student that I had taught in my Kindergarten classroom last school year was very low functioning.  This student’s parents preferred to home school, so this student left our school. This school year I was given a new assignment to the first grade team.  This student was re-enrolled this school year and was assigned to a first grade teacher.  This teacher approached me and voiced her concerns about the success of the student remaining in first grade.  The teacher asked me to go with her to discuss the situation with our administrator.  She and I approached our administrator and he took my professional opinion about the success of this student and listened to the current teacher’s concerns for the student’s success and, ultimately, made the decision to retain the student in Kindergarten.  I feel this shows that my building’s administrator listens to our concerns, values our opinions, and will ultimately make the decision.




Brandy Bruce

Graduate Student

Ohio University Southern Campus
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.ohio.edu/pipermail/ous-lp-rp13/attachments/20180619/7538137d/attachment-0001.html>