EDU 8677
School Leadership

Roundtable Discussions

EDU 8677 is conducted as a seminar with the intention that students will function as colleagues investigating literature from a variety of social science disciplines and applying it to the realities of the principalship as students currently understand it.  Reading the literature is the first responsibility of seminar participants.  Applying the literature to the principalship and sharing one's understandings and insights with one's colleagues is the second (and perhaps most important) responsibility of seminar participants.

The challenge students typically encounter is how best to present one's understandings and insights with one's colleagues.

Reflecting back upon their professional development experiences, the least helpful method is to regurgitate for one's colleagues the literature everyone has already studied.  Another less helpful method is to read from one's notes.  So the challenge for students is to develop an approach that will make the presentation of one's understandings and insights “user friendly.”

Although there is no singular way to achieve this outcome because much of this has to do with each student's interests, personality, and creativity, there are some guidelines that have proven helpful.

First: it is best to start with an attention getting topic sentence that distills everything down into a clear mental picture that your colleagues can take away with them.  Handouts outlining what everyone has already read and studied do provide a helpful way to communicate key ideas, but this approach generally is not a useful way to assist a group of colleagues to grasp what they can do with the material in actual practice episodes.

Second: provide a couple of ideas related to the topic that say to your colleagues “Here’s what’s in it for you.”  It would be as if you are telling your colleagues, “These are the things you need to know and remember when you are a principal.”  The handout, then, provides your colleagues a reference sheet upon which they can make notes for future reference.

Third: be sure to “critique” the material.  One of the best ways to get your colleagues to remember what is important regarding any chapter is to lead them down the merry path thinking about how they are approaching the Land of Oz.  Then, hammer them over the head with one or two solid reasons why the Yellow Brick Road might be a dead end for their professional practice.  This might not be possible with every chapter but, as was noted in yesterday’s class, there are some good ideas that will not work in schools for a variety of complicating reasons.

By adapting this approach to your style, you will actually require less time to engage your colleagues in conversation, provide them some professional “entertainment,” and get them to think.