Andrew Schiera

School Leadership Program

August 22, 2014
Philosophy of Leadership
I realize that, through the experiences I have had, I am extremely averse to top-down, managerial,
rational-structural (Evans, 2001) leadership. As a teacher in Philadelphia, I noted the ways in which
central office mandates seemed to more often scuttle than support my work in the classroom. Labarees
(2010) writing about teacher- and classroom-level resistance to reform, in which far away mandates
threaten to disrupt the gentle ecosystem I work to create in my classroom, has spoken to the way I have
experienced top-down management. As a teacher, I have appreciated moments when my schools
principal shielded us from those mandatesbut I know that leadership must also go beyond simply
protecting competent teachers from interruptions.
As I think about the most successful leadership experiences I have had, both as a member and a
leader, I think about the ways in which they involve collaborative, democratic decision-making, even if
they involve an individual leader providing impetus or facilitating implementation. What is central here
is the belief that although everyone is differently-positioned, everyone has expertise to share, and all of
that can contribute to the vision and success of the organization. This has been a value in my classroom
as a teacher: really getting to know my students and their interests and abilities, building the content and
instruction around them and not just the textbook, thinking about how students are perceiving the lesson
and how I can adapt to make it both more meaningful and impactful. Outside of instruction, it has also
been a central value of mine that students are the predominant experts on what school is like. The Urban
Education high school elective I built was meant to capture that, and provide a platform for students to
speak and act out about their own education. This value of hearing student voice is central to how I
imagine my school leadership. I am reminded of students in Alonso et al.s (2009) book, advocating to
their administrators about the inequitable conditions of their school; when the principal reads their
analysis and coldly asks, Where is the data, the students reply, Were right herewe are the data.
For me, this individual connection of students and valuing of their knowledge and experience should be
the first thought, not barely an afterthought, of a school leader.
A manifestation of this is my central desire to also teach one class period as a teacher. I would
gladly take up this as one of my central pursuits and inquiries of this term. I think this affords school
leaders a connection with students beyond simply as the authority/ disciplinarian, or the detached officebound administrator, and to a level that directly connects to students as people, learners, and experts on
how their school year is going. I think it also affords a platform to engage with teachers honestly,
providing credibility to discuss the challenges of teaching first-hand and to struggle to try new things and
manage many competing demands, too. This understanding of principal based on its root meaning
principal teacheris central to my vision of school leadership. I think this will also support my
exploration of how I, as a young teacher and aspiring young principal, and learner in both of those roles,
helps support older teachers learning and growth tooespecially given the considerations Evans (2001)
mentions about staff in midlife and midcareer, and the nature of change breeding feelings of
incompetence, insecurity, and conflict.

At some moments, I worry I have relished the leader role too much because of the way it
positions me as a driver of the process; at other moments, I worry about working too slowly to build
consensus when action is required. But in either case, a give-and-take between these is required, and in
that way, Evans book (2001) was hopeful but also cautionary. It might just be, plain and simple, that Id
like to imagine what a collaboratively- and democratically-run school would look like, but in reality, not
just theory. I turn to Yankelovitchs (1991) framework for coming to public judgment, in which the
public of the schoolstudents, teachers, parents, community membershelps define the vision and
values, and then the expert and public conversations speak to each other, engaging in choicework and
commitment about how to make those visions happen in reality.
If theres a diagram that sort of seeks to capture where I locate myself in all of this, it would
capture the ways in which I seek to hear from and experience the school from all perspectives, and use
that to inform my leadership:

Entry Plan Goals

How do I become a learner, listener, and intern-leader in a new place, a new community of
practice?
Given what drives me as a teacherknowing my students deeply, creating rigorous learning
experiences that go beyond the classroom to the real-worldfits Dr. Dunkleys vision for
Parkway CC HS, how do I help support older, more traditional teachers in trying out new things
and learning new approaches?
How does my opportunity to teach the high school Urban Education elective twice a week at
Parkway CC HS affect the way I engage with students and other teachers at the school, and how
does it inform the way I engage in leadership tasks at the school?
As I think ahead: what am I learning about the realities of engaging with real people, that can
help me better envision and create a democratic, collaborative, rigorous learning community of
my own some day?

References
Alonso, G.; Anderson, N.S.; Su, C.; & Theoharis, J. (2009). Our schools suck: Students talk back to a
segregated nation on the failures of urban education. New York, NY: New York University
Press.
Evans, R. (2001). The Human side of school change: Reform, resistance, and the real-life problems of
innovation. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Labaree, D. F. (2010). Someone has to fail: The Zero-sum game of public schooling. Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press.
Yankelovitch, D. (1991). Coming to public judgment: Making democracy work in a complex world.
Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press.