Individual Reflections Log - Transformational Leadership

In reflection of transformational leadership, there are many different components to this type of leadership. However, particularly, I would define it as a “change” leadership. Change in the sense of today’s society, organizations and schools need change to obtain progression and growth. These changes within schools are categorized as complex adaptive systems. This system is comprised of the diversity and changes in educational organizations. The complexity of these systems in America, in my opinion, will constantly evolve as long as we continue to grow with different nationalities and cultures in our country. So therefore with that in mind, a school leadership would be faced with the complexity of changing its vision to meet the needs of all stakeholders. This is transformational leadership.

Complex Adaptive Systems are non-linear. Non-linear in the sense that change is abrupt and immediate. Dialogue is challenged and innovative thinking is fostered to develop ideas of improvement. Non-linear thinking provides the scope for flexibility and creativity to form. I think that it is important to encourage non-linear thinking among teachers and staff because it promotes the diversity of learning styles that teachers are exercising in our classrooms today.

Within transformational leadership it is effective for a school leadership to encourage organizational learning. Organizational Learning requires the building of a network for obligation of consistent strides to re-organize and implement school improvement. With organizational learning your will need a) build a network within the school, b) formulate teacher work teams with each team member developing instructional tasks for the standards they were assigned, c)build redundancy of the system but allow ideas to bloom, d) using time; allow time for teachers to work together to develop ideas and e) requisite variety~ Simply put, (pg. 53) This means reaching out to all staff to bring their considerable talents to the team table and creatthe learning opportunites students need to reach the mutual goal we have negotiated with them.

In conclusion, transformational leadership requires change. Changes that will have educational organizations and school leadership stategically analyze profound ways to support students to gain academic achievement.

Reflection Two

Week Two has ended and so has the last day of school! It was a very hectic week. In fact, I am typing this blog for a second input because I realized that the previous reflection I drafted did not post to my blog :)



Moving forward, I realized that I am going to have to really organize my personal calendar so that I can effective use time management to complete deadlines. Typically, I do well with planning and managing my time, but I think that since I had learned about the cohort at the end of April, applied and then was accepted, I did not make time to close-out other commitments I was involved in (like the Doctoral program I am presently in).



Nevertheless, wthe cohort is an intriguing challenge and I am looking forward to more fun-filled activities. If I had these type of activities in undergraduate or graduate school I am sure I would have contribute my full attention to completing my studies. This cohort has me excited about learning new things.



Setting a personal time management calendar will help me to interact with my team and be an effective team member. It is difficult when everyone on a team has family and other obligations that must be completed. One strategy that I learned from our learning chat is to use a baseball hat as an indicator to my family that I am studying and unavailable. I have implemented the strategy. (LOL) I must say at first my family thought it was funny and they ignored the "cap" but when I stayed steadfast and refuse to respond they fell into the play of the game. It is amazing how Jean Piaget's experiment with the mouse really works to change someone's behavior. :)



My communication inventory, placed me as a "thinker" as a communicator. I have to be very watchful of that because sometimes I am told in general I think ttttoooooo much. So I am going to try to focus on the strengths of my communication style so that it will outweigh the weaknesses.

Reflection One

Whew-Well week one of my online orientation class has ended! It included a plethora of activities that really redirected me to the emphasis of technology. I was faberglassed to encounter an aspect of the web that I was not familiar with. I really enjoyed the layout of activities and oftentimes felt challenged. The ELC interface was brand new to me. In the past I have taken online classes that used BlackBoard and other familiar interfaces for classes. The ELC was very simple to adapt to, this is why the scavenger hunt was so useful. I developed many ideas of activities I can incoporate into my fifth-grade classroom. Especially when they are learning the basic skills of Microsoft Word, PowerPoint etc.

One concern that I had was organizing my time management. Next week is the last week of school. the previous and upcoming weeks have and will be extremely rough for me. I will need to follow a schedule precisely to meet deadlines. I think the biggest challenge I faced during this time period was last night when we had an electrical power outage which prevented me from logging on and completing this assignment of constructing a blog page. I know I can only complete the things that I am in control of.

Other than that I am very excited about the integration of technology in this class!!!

Well I am signing off until next time...Adrienne