What does it take for principals to lead schools successfully, and how prepared are they? Principals face a difficult task in ensuring that every student has the opportunity to participate in a high-quality educational experience. School leadership must prioritize equities and excellence to fulfill this challenge, and principals must be instructional leaders who prioritize equity.
How frequently do school leaders take a strategic pause to think about what they should do next? The answer to this question is not enough. School leaders are expected to be on the go constantly, accomplishing more and thinking more. Is that even possible to do so? Expecting leaders to succeed in a world where they must always act, think, and generate more is, at best, self-defeating. It might be terrible for our projects, teams, and health in the worst-case scenario. So, how do we keep up and improve as leaders simultaneously? We do it by challenging, if not outright contradicting, established wisdom.
If ‘Experience is the Best Teacher’ and simulations approximate experience, then simulations can provide an excellent opportunity for learning in the context of professional leadership development. So how does this work? When approaching the challenge of learning, it is crucial to acknowledge that there is a distinction between learning from ‘teaching’ and learning from ‘experience.’ Once we have that as a baseline of understanding, we can examine how or where learning happens in ‘experience.’
Many educators are now rethinking how virtual learning might improve the student experience by providing more flexibility than in-class options, especially for hybrid and all-virtual learning models. Colleges and universities now have the potential to progress beyond these improvised models. They can try to create more stable online learning platforms that cater to a diverse group of students who require coursework at various times and in multiple formats to fit their own goals and lifestyles.
School administrators around the country are debating policy changes and professional development. Recent research suggests that teachers’ implicit biases may impact student results, underscoring the need for these discussions. It is tough to quantify implicit prejudice in teachers because it is not always part of the evaluation process that school districts and administrators go through – it is not always part of looking at teachers in the classroom. While there has been much theoretical research on teacher biases, quantifiable confirmation of the link between biases and outcomes has only lately become available.
If simulations work in the medical field, simulations could be used in every field, whether that be an advertising major learning how to pitch to prospective clients or an education student learning how to deal with building an inclusive classroom.
Even the best leaders and educators have room to improve. Part of getting aspirants on the same page with the rest of the district is simply communicating the district’s values, beliefs, and priorities throughout leadership and professional development.
Much attention was drawn to the challenge of learning loss over the last couple of years as schools and the entire country have wrestled with COVID-19 and the best ways to navigate it. It has certainly been a learning experience, an entire school of hard knocks, with lots of bumps and bruises along the way.
The learning by doing principle is a widely known principle in education that refers to learning from experiences directly relating to one’s own actions. This hands-on approach concludes that people must interact with their environment in order to adapt and learn. Philosopher, John Dewey, most notably created and implemented this idea through the creation of the University of Chicago Laboratory School.
Students are more than race, ethnicity, ability, age, sexual orientation, family structure, and class. They have layers of lived experiences that directly impact their success in life and academia. For many students, their life experiences are just as much a piece of their educational framework as their in-class experiences. Sometimes, even more so.