Leading 21st Century Schools: What Strategic School Leaders Need to Know
"To be a successful leader in the 21st century, school leaders need to be open to change, know how to manage change, and be risk takers". What does this mean? What will it take for students to be successful in the 21st century? What will school leaders need to provide for success of the 21st century student? Will technology insure success of the 21st century student?
A successful school leaders will need a vision that is shared by all stakeholders with specified goals. Change must involve continuous change in which goals are evaluated, reflected upon and revised. In order to accomplish the vision, the whole school and district must work together. A systematic plan must be developed in order to change a school culture. Technology will be a part of the vision for change. Goals should include how to get technology in the school, ongoing professional development, revising the curriculum, providing student center instruction and cultivating partnerships within the community.
Technology, in itself, will not insure success of the 21st century student. In order for success, students will need skills which include:
- critical thinking
- problem solving
- creativity
- innovations
- communication
- collaboration
- information literacy
- media literacy
- technology literacy
To be successful in the global society, students will need to be able to "access, evaluate, synthesize and communicate large amounts of rapidly changing information".
No one person or tool can know or hold all the knowledge. As is takes a school community to run a school, it takes many people and tools to educate a student. Web 2.0, social media and Web 3.0 (the Semantic Web) are a few of the tools students will need for success.
Standards for teachers and administrators are changing in order to allow students to become successful in the 21st century. The Interstate School Leaders Licensure Consortium (ISLLC) developed common standards for both administrators and teachers in 1996 and updated them in 2014. These standards cultivate teacher effectiveness, provide collective leadership and meets the need for change.
Schools in North Carolina have begun the process of change. In the system I work in, the process in school improvement and school improvement plans have changed. In the past, we would create a two year plan and evaluate it every year. Beginning this year, 2016-2017, we changed the process and started using a program Indistar. This program incorporates the evaluation, reflection revision of specific goals in a timely manner. The School Improvement Team meets twice a month to continuously work in the plan and goals. As a system, we are currently using the Digital Learning Process Rubric from the North Carolina Digital Learning Plan to evaluate our schools and system.
Schrum, L. & Levin, B. B. (2015). Leading 21st-Century Schools. Thousand Oaks, CA:
Corwin.
