Session 2

Activity Log for Session 2-
Wednesday, January 21: Created bloglist of all members of ETEC 623
Wednesday, January 21: Began commenting on members blogs
Thursday, January 22: Met with Dr. Kamusikiri about program
Thursday, January 22: Continued science lesson series for research project
Friday, January 23: Added to my Session 2 blog, and continued to comment on others

Management vs Leadership
I have been struck recently how leadership without management causes both to break down. We have been part of an EETT grant, which ends it three year cycle this year. Part of our grant that was developed included both IT support and IT staff development and coaching. As we end our grant funding for this program, district money was supposed to take over, and continue this powerful and successful combination of support. Of course, as with the entire country, drastic budget shortfalls cause our district to almost immediately drastically cut back on this support. Already, the use of technology district-wide has suffered, and the it seems that much of the progress we made in the 3 years of the grant has been decreased.

We just don't have the money to continue much of the leadership activities that moved this grant along.

Now, is it management of resources that caused this, or lack of leadership?

To me, it is both. We built into the grant ways the district could fund this initiative beyond its federal funded life, but we did not consider the drastic cuts that would mandated by the financial meltdown.

We also did not create a leadership core that could operate without significant funding. We did not consider how we move ahead in technology leadership with viable funding to continue with trainings, workshops, inservices, and to continue to push programs that would propel our program forward. So, we watch as much of what was built the last 3 years languishes in unfunded stagnation.

I suppose that the way to move from management of what is left of our district's IT program to leadership in innovation is to move from a centralized, district-wide focus to individual movement in classrooms or schools, supporting changes at the classroom and site level instead of trying to maintain district-wide changes without district-wide funding. Leadership once again at the grassroot level. And we will continue to manage the remaining equipment, district and state-wide technology expectations, and refinement of the current instructional practices throughout the district. However, leadership with new ideas, new initiatives, new equipment and new technologies is perhaps going to be, as necessitated by the budget crisis, smaller and more client-based, and not so much system-wide in scope.

Anyway, this is what Dr. Newberry's lecture brought up in my thinking.

As a leader, I am going to have to find ways to continue to focus my resources to improve the school, not just improve our technology, since that technology we have will need to be enough for us for awhile. As for management, I am befuddled with the thought that we need to find ways of managing our staff training needs without money for such support- How to manage the need to keep staff current with instructional design and implementation, without the resources to do so. Do we create staff teams of trainers who coach through the PLC structure?

And how can leadership skills in this crisis trump the need to manage the crisis first?

I suppose that if the answers to this were easy, we all would not need to be in a leadership class. We would just know the answers. It's great to be in such a class, with a format of exploration of ideas and professional support that will, however, give us the ability to find the answer to management vs leadership in the age of diminished funding.