EDU 555: The K-12 Administrator as Instructional Leader

Overview

As leaders in educational institutions, school administrators are much more than managers of facilities and budgets. They must have a clear idea of what kind of education their schools should provide and a concrete plan for working with their staff to achieve it.

This course is designed to prepare current and potential K-12 administrators to effectively select, support, and supervise teachers and educational personnel, focusing on the ultimate goal of improving student learning and, therefore, having a successful school.

EDU555 emphasizes the role of supervision as the element that transforms discrete instructional efforts into whole-school action. Students will be provided with a combination of theories, models, and concrete techniques for developing a system of supervision. In this sense, students will design a system of supervision for an educational context of their choice that they will develop throughout the course. This kind of course project will provide them an opportunity to practice an important supervisory task: design actions from a holistic point of view.

Learning Outcomes

Upon successful completion of this course, students will be able to:

• Develop a personally-relevant approach to supervision.
• Display and enforce professional standards in all personnel decisions.
• Select and use observable criteria of good teaching.
• Gather valid and relevant observation data and provide feedback on teacher performance that contributes to improve student achievement.
• Summarize rules and regulations that govern supervision in their selected educational contexts.
• Design a coherent plan for hiring new teachers.
• Design a plan for supporting teacher professional development.
• Design a plan for resolving a conflict within the school context or dealing with underperforming teachers in an effective way.
• Build a meaningful, professional-quality, portfolio-ready system of supervision that demonstrates how a K-12 administrator can lead an educational context to success.

Required Texts
EDU 555 texts are available from the JIU/MBS bookstore