Meeting the Moment with Innovative Online Leader Preparation

Transcript

From New Leaders, this is our Leadership Changes Everything series. We’re elevating leaders' voices from across the country. I’m really pleased to be talking today with Dean Prentice Chandler and Dr. Laura Barnett, faculty at Austin Peay State University.

You won a state grant that’s allowing you to provide a free administrator preparation program and master’s degree in Educational Administration to more than 60 educators in Tennessee in this coming year. And you partnered with us to help you design the program. From your perspective, how is the experience of these educators, these 60 people, going to be different from other programs in Tennessee?

Dr. Barnett:

Something that’s special about this program is that the content is not just the theory of leadership. It really is the practices. It’s the day-to-day work. We are giving our students job-embedded assignments. We’re asking them to work with a mentor principal. They’re doing problems of practice. They have some release time during the day, so that they can have these experiences that look more like what an administrator learned during their first year with their feet on the ground. We have coaches for small groups of students to meet with monthly that are sitting, practicing principals in Tennessee, who can give them the wisdom of their experience. They have professors in the program who’ve had experience in schools. It just looks completely different than anything we’ve offered before. I would also say that with the unexpected COVID situation, it being completely online allows us to be faithful to this program even if some things change in our environment.

Dr. Chandler:

In the College, we have attempted to make a paradigm shift in how we prepare teachers and how we prepare leaders. Historically, it was framed as colleges of ed train teachers, and then we’d send them off into the workforce, and then we wouldn’t have anything to do with them for the rest of their time as teachers. The shift is looking at the development of teachers and leaders as a partnership between a local school district and a College of Education.

I say this in meetings all the time: our College of Education is judged by the work that our graduates do. That’s the signature hallmark of whether or not you’re doing a good job. If our teachers are doing a good job in the classrooms, and our leaders are doing a good job leading schools and leading districts, that’s just about the best stamp of approval you can get.

One of the things that we try to do when we work in partnership with universities is two things at once: one, understand and respect the strengths and assets that you all as an institution bring to the work; and two, push you into maybe uncomfortable places around how to change and move so you can get better results on behalf of the participants and the kids they serve. I’m curious if there are any areas in which you felt particularly pushed in your thinking in terms of working with us.

Dr. Barnett:

I have recently been a public-school principal in Tennessee for 18 years. When I think about who I would like to see come out of our program and be ready to walk into a school, I’m thinking about people who are student-centered, who are focused on the work, who are collaborative at solving problems and accomplishing end goals, who have a commitment to high expectations, who understand some of the soft skills as well that go along with being an administrator.

I have really strong and passionate feelings about what administrators need to be doing in their buildings to take care of their school and their community. But I don’t always have the article, or the research, or the concept to go with it to teach that skill to someone else. I think that has been a huge area of learning for me. I’m going from being a practitioner to being an educator and a developer of a program – and that is where New Leaders has really been the backbone of this for me.

Dr. Chandler:

When we have conversations with school districts, when we have conversations with the state, when we have conversations with people like New Leaders – the conclusion you come away with is that we all want the same thing. So, if we want the same things, then why not work together to get to those ends? We will work with anybody that I think can help us do a better job. New Leaders obviously fits that mold. We are open to the idea that we don’t pretend to know the best ways to do everything. There are some people who do, who can help us. It would be foolish to not take advantage of that.

Dr. Barnett:

It has been a really exciting adventure to partner with people who have the caliber of work ethic and integrity and expertise that New Leaders has provided to us. I could never have put together the kind of program we’re going to be able to deliver