Marzano's 21 Responsibilities of a School Leader

There were several similarities between my self assessment of Marzano's 21 Responsibilities of the School Leader and the McREL Balanced Leadership online inventory.  Strengths that were listed on both surveys were culture, knowledge of curriculum, instruction, and assessment, and visibility.  These similarities did not surprise me because they all relate closely with my beliefs and with what type of leader I hope to be.  I know that developing the culture of my organization will be a priority of mine.  I read a lot about the value of teamwork this week when researching the leadership theorists.  I also know that curriculum and instruction will be a priority of mine, considering my background as a classroom teacher.  I have always loved lesson planning and finding innovative ways to engage my students, and so I hope to remain involved and knowledgeable regarding curriculum and instruction.  Lastly, I hope to be visible to my staff and students, because those were always the type of principals for whom I wanted to work.  I was especially impressed during my student teaching by a principal who stood in the front lobby and personally greeted as many students as he could in the morning.  I was blown away by how many of them he knew by name and how many of them he was able to speak to each morning.  Every student was greeted by his presence, a smile, and motivating words.  That is the type of principal I hope that I'd be. 

Categories that I scored the lowest in, on both assessments, were flexibility and outreach.  It was interesting that I scored the lowest in flexibility because I consider myself to be a very flexible teacher.  I think the reason I am scoring low is because I am not "comfortable with dissent".  I know that this is something I will need to work on before I am in a leadership role, but I am happiest and most comfortable when everyone is in agreement.  I think it might be challenging for me to adapt my leadership style, without also adapting to the wants of the dissenting group and just "giving in" for the sake of peace.  I believe I scored myself low in the outreach category, simply because I know how hectic school life can be, and I have a feeling that communicating on behalf of the school in the community might be what ends up at the bottom of my priority list.  I hope that this might be a task that I can delegate to another school leader so that I can be sure that it is happening.    

Some of the most blatant discrepancies were among discipline and contingent awards.  I think initially I scored myself low on the self assessment in both of these categories because I was too focused on what my limitations might be; for example, I know that I will never be able to completely clear a teacher from all the distractions from their teaching time and focus and I will never be able to recognize every individual's personal accomplishments.  However, the detailed questions in the McREL survey, helped me to realize the many opportunities there are for a school leader to fulfill these responsibilities, which is why I scored higher on this category on the McREL inventory. 

I was pleased to read that my top seven strengths, according to the McREL online inventory, (culture, visibility, knowledge of curriculum, ideas/beliefs, resources, discipline, and order) almost all have a .25 correlation with student achievement or above.  This makes me feel confident that I'll have what it takes to be an effective leader, but considering the closeness in correlation values that all of the 21 responsibilities have, it makes sense to always strive to meet all of the 21 responsibilities.