Time will tell if these silver linings actually occur. For product help and technical assistance. As they set goals and strive toward recovery, school leaders should be careful not to frame those challenges as deficits, but rather as assets. If you want to go far, go slow and go together. These administrators and their teams took time to identify a coherent, long-term plan of how [they] would like to approach the work for distance learning. Organizational decision-making frameworks based on their values guided district- and school-level leadership teams as they moved forward with their response plans. (ed.) Rev. Another important finding regarding crisis leadership is that what constitutes effective leadership often changes over the time span of the crisis (Hannah et al., 2009). Create a free account to save your favorite articles, follow important topics, sign up for email newsletters, and more. doi: 10.5040/9781472552921.ch-001, Smith, L., and Riley, D. (2012). Mike, a director of curriculum and technology, described his experience: I think there are some really good positives that have come from this experience there is a lot of sharing going on and reconnecting with our personal learning networks has been fantastic People are talking and sharing at a rapid pace so that there is a lot of crowdsourcing around that information. I wouldnt be surprised if this school year, we see a school district that experiences a significant cybersecurity incident that turns into an existential crisis, he said, because they will not be able to restore their systems or they wont have the funding necessary to continue operations, and theyre not going to have insurance to bail them out.. Interviews: An introduction to qualitative research interviewing. Our educators have been fantastic about really meeting the needs of parents [and] kids.. Sutherland (2017) examined leadership behaviors in light of a school crisis caused by the accidental deaths of two students on a service-learning trip. Schools will have many goals, and each one will be important, but if you want true momentum, its critical to prioritize only those that are most critical. The other problems in the top half included lack of discipline, overcrowded schools, and lack of parental support, although none of those had even a third of the votes received by lack of financial support.. In fact, it is a precondition for doing so. The critical importance of these foundational structures cannot be overstated. Children and youth with disabilities are much less likely to attend school than children without disabilities, particularly at higher grade levels (Kuper et al., 2014). Accessing the collective wisdom of the educational community also permeated the international community. This increased transparency and visibility has the potential to change the face of education going forward. Mary Beth, a director of educational technology, shared that were listening regularly to our parents, were listening to our teachers, and were listening to our students. Feedback in the form of parent and student surveys were important to Cory, a superintendent: You let people share. The latest educational trend in school is the use of technology. (PDF) Challenges Faced by School Heads in Maintaining Students The literature cited here from other contexts also is applicable to school systems. Shalby, C. (2020). Philip A. Dwyer/The Bellingham Herald via AP. The intent of the interviews was to gain an understanding of how interviewees school organizations were responding during the early months of the global pandemic. And we were able to launch that in about 2 weeks. Under the theme of disregarding managerial skills, bureaucratic obstacles w ere one of the m ain challenges faced . The importance of clear, constant, and effective communication was universally recognized by all school leaders as an essential component to a successful transition to remote learning. 61, 1719. doi: 10.1080/13632434.2020.1811479. Communication came from every level of educational organizations immediately. On the other hand, the result isnt that surprising at all. Kristina, a principal, summed it up when she said, If this [pandemic] has done nothing else, [it has shown us that] we need to work together in a connected world and leverage our shared brilliance, our shared experience.. We also invited several project- and inquiry-based learning schools to share their experiences, which we thought might be different from more traditional school systems. If anything, the silver lining here is that that is pretty exciting to think about what could be. Most school systems were caught flatfooted, despite the fact that many locations had several months warning. Corp. Commun. Dev. Is sending them home the best, you know, unsupervised? They should work on making schools much safer places for students. Schools generally do not have an HR department, so the responsibility of finding new teachers and non-teaching staff falls upon the school administrators. Jori, a dean of students, explained: I think what were finding is were learning something new every day and that its okay. So every single day something goes home to all the parents, all the students, [and] all the teachers that is a message from me: heres how were doing, heres where we are, heres where were going, and then it celebrates student work, it celebrates the teachers work, there are video clips, and it just connects everyone back to school and parents and kids. Unfortunately for many school leaders during the first months of the pandemic, policymakersand often the administrators above those leaders in the organizational hierarchyoften lacked an accurate picture of what was occurring, nor did they share what they knew with others in ways that enabled effective leadership responses and partnerships. One obvious example would be the schools that already had implemented 1:1 computing initiatives. Whats more, with remote technology, schools can bring in experts in nearly any field to speak to their classes, or connect their kids with peers in schools around the globe. Zezima, K., Craig, T., Wan, W., and Sonmez, F. (2020). Another consistent element of crisis leadership is effective communication, and numerous scholars have emphasized the leaders role in communicating with both internal and external audiences. That chapterand the overall story of pandemic-era schoolingcontinues to be written. Remind staff that self-quarantining decreases opportunities for children and spouses to cry out. Crisis leadership: an organizational opportunity. J. Reading and Retention Mandates: Is it Effective? J. Leadersh. As expected from the research literature (see, e.g., Lucero et al., 2009; Boin et al., 2013; Heath and OHair, 2020), the leaders who we interviewed recognized instantly that communication in all forms was a critical component of navigating the rapidly changing uncertainty that they faced. As a Walden online EdD candidate, youll have access to the most current teachings and theories to prepare you to influence learning outcomes in your school or district. 2020). Early outbreaks in China and Italy led to drastic societal lockdowns in Southeast Asia and Europe. 7 Big Challenges Faced by School Management & How To Overcome Them Three different schools in China were selected because the COVID-19 virus appeared to originate there, schools in that country were the first in the world to close down, and we thought that their early responses would be informative to schools in other countries for whom the virus was just starting to influence decision-making. The COVID-19 pandemic has presented new challenges for the school administrators, and their responsibilities have increased in coordination with a heightened degree of accountability. Crisis leadership: when should the CEO step up? By mid-March it was clear that the virus was going global. Bus drivers, cafeteria managers, and librarians were among the many who joined forces to create support structures. For instance, teachers newly acquired technology skills wont just disappear. This is one of the reasons why classroom management is one of the biggest challenges for school administrators. School Leadersh. So thats been tremendously helpful as you get more and more variables and other decisions that youre making just to be calibrated on what do we really care about? Unemployment can also play a huge role in this. So, things that teachers are familiar with and they can support each other, At many schools, schedules also were simplified in an effort to stave off distance-learning fatigue, as Danny, an international middle school principal, said. (PDF) SCHOOL ADMINISTRATORS' CHALLENGES AND SOLUTIONS - ResearchGate A few were teachers or instructional coaches. When we teach children, we give them multiple opportunities to practice, allow them to make errors, and support them to learn from each experience. Dr. Suzanne Wesson, academic coordinator for Waldens Richard W. Riley College of Education and Human Sciences, thanked Porter for her insights and acknowledged the historic challenges facing educational leadership and administration in schools. Jeff, the chief administrator for a regional educational service agency, spoke for many when he stated, our first and foremost priority was making sure our own people [were] okay. Knowing that building capacity would come later, many school leaders approached their staff with an eye for compassion and grace rather than compliance. Each of these executive tasks has been unpacked in further detail in the scholarly literature and most of the elements in the framework from Boin, Kuipers, and Overdijk occur frequently in others conceptual models (see, e.g., Smith and Riley, 2012; Dckers et al., 2017). In the webinar Online and Hybrid Instruction: Preparing K12 Educators for the Upcoming Academic Year, elementary school principal Dr. Sharon Porter zeroed in on the top five challenges for administrators: quality instruction; access for students; effective communication; social and emotional issues for students, teachers, staff, and administrators; and economic hardship for students and families. People are burnt out, and they just cant deal anymore.. Gallup, Beyond the Principal: U.S. Education System Needs Visionary Leaders, State of Americas Schools, available as a PDF download on the Internet at www.gallup.com/services/178709/state-america-schools-report.aspx. Advocates worry that suspensions and expulsions could create yet another pandemic consequence for the nations most vulnerable kids and have called on schools to work with students whove already missed weeks or months of instruction during the pandemic, rather than punish them. One of the biggest challenges, when it came to post-pandemic normalcy, was the struggle to allow parents to send their kids back to school.However, it does not end there. After a tumultuous and unprecedented 18 months, schools are again opening their doors and welcoming back students for another year filled with changes, opportunities, and challenges. And about three quarters of it is positivity. Heath, R. L., and OHair, H. D. (eds) (2020). So we turned to top district administrators from three districts for advice on school budgets. Include addresses, phone numbers, and URLs. The school itself may be larger. (2011). The list of ed-tech challenges facing schools this year is a long one. Do you know how dyslexia manifests and what students with dyslexia need to succeed? Coding was conducted both jointly and individually. School systems across the planet began to close and the Washington Post headline read, Coronavirus now a global pandemic as United States world scramble to control outbreak (Zezima et al., 2020). Students at many of the schools we interviewed are doing more than just showing their learning in new ways. The rest of the world soon followed. Although many scholars have noted the revolutionary potential of major crises (see, e.g., Prewitt et al., 2011; Harris, 2020), Boin and Hart (2003) stated that there are inherent tensions between crisis management and reform-oriented leadership. You design your online EdDcourse of study by choosing from electives that focus on issues critical to P20 education. Weve had to approach a couple things differently We held a parade. They are more traditional teachers weve had our beginner Google Classroom sessions where were full of those people but not as many from some friends I have in other districts who say theyve never used Google Classroom. As the number of interviews grew, we began to receive requests to identify larger themes that cut across the conversations and to delineate specific leadership behaviors that seemed to be useful during the crisis. While the availability of these resources is not new, the broad-based implementation and long-overdue recognition of the availability and potential benefits of these resources is a significant change for many educators. Commun. These findings resonate with the larger research literature on crisis leadership and have important implications for school leaders future mindsets, behaviors, and support structures during crisis incidents. The schools leaders who we interviewed approached their work during the early months of the pandemic with a strong equity lens, and many of them saw the potential emergence of future organizational opportunities despite their present challenges and struggles.
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