3 Ways to Support Educational Leaders in the New Pedagogy

Teaching is no longer simply imparting information and asking students to regurgitate, employing special techniques to help students remember information. Teaching is -- well -- no longer teaching. It is facilitating. It is designing rigorous, relevant experiences that cause students to need the knowledge and skills we want them to learn, as they work together to create something (solution, product, concept, change) measurable and meaningful to their world.

Am I preaching to the choir? Maybe.

But how many educational leaders (former classroom teachers) could, right now, today, develop, implement, and sustain a TRUE project-based approach in an English, math, science, or social studies classroom? How many could take over for a teacher tomorrow and turn that classroom into a 21st-century exemplar? Where, even, to begin that process? How many of us know how to "put it all together" to achieve a classroom based on the NETS and focused on the CCSS? How many of us can even simply discuss how to START building this type of learning environment?

As with a large number of current teachers, most of us administrators are products of a 20th-century K-12 education paradigm and a centuries-old university education paradigm. Through no fault of our own, we are conditioned to learn by sitting, and we are trained to teach by imparting knowledge--with lecturing to whole-class groups being the most efficient way to do so. We can discuss standards, objectives, strategies and techniques--define them, explain them, give examples of them, refer to articles about them; and if you'll just tell us the steps involved in accomplishing a new task, we're all over it.

Education Week (@educationweek) played right into my hands today by Tweeting its article calling for more support of principals. Many education discussions and programs center around the critical need to develop teachers' (especially veteran teachers') grasp of the 21st-century learning paradigm and its accompanying shift in educational practice. While I recognize this challenge, I am also deeply concerned about educational leaders on this issue.

Here are three very basic ways to support educational leaders during this time:

Educational leaders need to have continual, in-depth teacher training (as opposed to an administrative overview) in the new pedagogy.
For starters, districts should require educational leaders (building- and district-level) to study available resources on facilitating the CCSS and NETS in the classroom. I recommend the free online Intel Teach Elements courses. Maybe your district's administrators could do this together over the next year in place of a book study -- online using a blog to discuss when they can't get together face-to-face.

Educational leaders should be expected to belong to and participate in a Professional Learning Network (PLN) for educators. Online social networks such as Twitter, Facebook, and Google+ all allow people to tailor their experiences to specific purposes such as professional learning. Educational leaders need to immerse themselves in the topic of educational pedagogy.

Educational leaders need time to study, explore, observe, mentor, and...LEAD.
We all need this; teachers need this; and, as the front-line educational leaders, principals specifically need more time -- to be unburdened by all of the other areas of responsibility that they traditionally handle. Principals are too heavily weighed down by managerial tasks when they should be enabled to focus solely on educational leadership -- learning, mentoring, observing, collaborating, developing excellent teachers and ensuring deep, long-lasting learning for students.

Is my head in the clouds? Probably. But that's better than having my head in the sand.