Program of Study
8423 Advanced Leadership for Learning Environments
Course Description
Students will demonstrate their understanding of instructional improvement for all teachers and students by designing and defending a comprehensive strategy for instructional changes in a simulated school. The on-going study of learning principles and effective instructional practices will be concluded.
Reflection
Being an educator in the state of Missouri, it is not only required but it is imperative that you continue your education in order to stay current with national trends, to remain certified and to advance on the school district's salary schedule. After I received my Masters in Education from the University of Missouri, I took a few years away from graduate education. It wasn't too long before I realized it was time to continue with that salary schedule advancement and I was getting the itch to pursue another advanced degree. After talking with colleagues and experiencing some leadership roles at my high school I thought administration was the next step for me. So I applied and was accepted to the University of Missouri's Education Leadership and Policy Analysis program. ELPA 8423 was the first class I took on the road to what I thought was my future.
This course was a hybrid course where much of the content was completed through Blackboard, however, we did meet as a class on three separate occasions throughout the semester. I was surrounded by fellow students who were, for the most part, already well into the program and already serving in assistant principal or principal positions. Talk about feeling like a fish out of water. But I did learn a lot about administration, mostly from the three class meetings, where a lot of valuable discussion took place.
Effective school leadership and what that really means was the focus of this course. Topics covered were learner-center psychological principles, a multitude of theories of learning, and what makes an effective instructional leader. The connection statement I wrote discusses my perception of an effective instructional leader, based on readings and my experience with principals.
One of my group projects, which was completed using a wiki which I no longer have access to, centered around Knud Illeris's three dimensions of learning. Illeris is an educational scholar from Denmark who argues that in order for learning to take place all three dimensions of the process, the cognitive, the emotional, and the social dimensions must be simultaneously involved. My group was responsible for synthesizing the information from the readings and gathering additional materials to support our presentation where we discussed the relevance of the three dimensions of learning to effective classroom instruction and the implications for school leaders.
After a lot of reading and writing and discussion, I began questioning my decision to enter this program. I started to doubt that this was the career path for which I was destined. But I carried on an enrolled in my second course on the administrative path: ELPA 9424.