Chapter 23 begins with a quote from Seymour Fleigel saying "There are more vacancies for principals and a greater dearth of qualified candidates than I've seen in the last forty years."
Then chapter 26 begins with an Einstein quote "We cannot solve the problems we've created with the same thinking that created them."

Einstein's quote sums up the problem Fleigel was talking about. In my opinion, we continue to see the same problems within education because of the unwillingness to change the way things are done. If you have Dr Lindle's class on Wednesday nights, you've heard he say that for the most part, public schools look the same today as they did twenty, thirty or forty years ago. (probably even further back) Anyway, we aren't willing to change the way we address problems within our public schools because there are too many in leadership positions who shoot down innovation because of their attitudes of complacency and their unwillingness to adjust to a new generation of students.

We need to evolve as leaders and be willing to try new ideas within our schools and ignore the criticism that comes with the territory of trying something new.

Research Interest

One thing I'm finding out about myself is how little I actually know about a topic I thought I was an expert in about a year and a half ago. I guess my arrogance got the best of me, but I figured that since I worked in public education that I was an expert on NCLB. Well, some of you will not be surprised by this, I'm an idiot. NCLB is not a simple policy and I still know very little about the policy.
My research interest has shifted from a broad topic about NCLB and it's effect on public schools in SC to more about how educational leaders are involved in the process of policy development. For those of you who know Dr Brewer, I actually came up with this on my own before I even talked to him about it. Anyway, as you may have noticed during our class discussions, I tend to focus on political leadership and how it applies to education.
Well, foolishly, I decided to do my final paper on political leadership theory and found very little literature about this individual theory. I found myself attempting to create my own definition of Political Leadership Theory based on what had been said in class and by taking information from Discursive Theory and applying it to what political scientists have said about leadership. I only wish that I could've devoted more time to this paper because I get the feeling this is more of a reflection on what the lit review for the dissertation will be like. I was trying to take literature from various different subjects and create something a little bit different. But with prelims and everything else going on, I was not able to really dive in and do as good of a job as I would've wanted to do. I guess that might be a little brutally honest, but I hope Dr K doesn't hold it against me when grading the final paper.

Some random thoughts on leadership

As a first year assistant principal, I have really done some reflecting on my own leadership style. I've written my first two lit reviews on Transformational and Situational Leadership. Clearly, any building level administrator has to be a situational leader to be successful and in theory, transformational leadership should be successful. But, it's so weird being a first year administrator, because I don't feel like I've built enough trust within the faculty to chase after any old change that I think would be beneficial for our school.

The principal has asked me to be the site coordinator for our Making Middle Grades Work school improvement initiative. At times, as a leadership group, we've received quite a bit of kickback from the faculty whenever we ask them to analyze what they've been doing and try something new even when suggestions are very minor changes. Sometimes, I wonder if we are only sensing the negativity because the "new guy" is the one that's been placed in charge of the MMGW initiative. It's just a different dynamic when you're a first year administrator. It's definitely a tough thing trying to quickly build the trust among the faculty during the first few weeks of school, but the important thing I've discovered is that any time I bring up a change or something new I have to always make it about one thing--the students. Focusing on the students makes any changes easier, no matter what leadership style I am.