Here are some of the top challenges faced by school administrators and the school administration. Copyright 2021 McLeod and Dulsky. The upside: Once teachers figure out how to use the tools to improve student learning, theyll have made a lasting shift, he emphasized. Many are sending food out on school buses to reach communities. The most productive path forward on unfamiliar ground is to move deliberately toward clear, aligned, and collaborative goals. And we were able to launch that in about 2 weeks. We heard numerous examples of individual and organizational risk-taking. Challenge No. A YouTube channel was created to host the videos. Hundreds of thousands and perhaps millions of students still cannot access instruction remotely. Public Health Prep. Public Adm. 18, 7991. Even if basic student needs for food were met, mental health supports and digital resources often were woefully inadequate. The Gazette interviewed Bridget Long, A.M. '97, Ph.D. '00, dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Education and Saris . Handbook of Risk and Crisis Communication. Keywords: crisis leadership, school leadership, pandemic leadership, crisis management, COVID-19, schools, administrators, leadership, Citation: McLeod S and Dulsky S (2021) Resilience, Reorientation, and Reinvention: School Leadership During the Early Months of the COVID-19 Pandemic. Vendors who work with K-12 schools are also increasingly likely to be the target of an attack. We took the approach at the start of the year that we had to reteach kids how to be in school, Paterson said. In one of the few empirical studies to emerge so far on pandemic-era school leadership, Rigby et al. James, E. H., and Wooten, L. P. (2011). The literature cited here from other contexts also is applicable to school systems. Public Adm. Rev. Educ. 5, 3034. These routines provide a level of consistency and certainty that helps children feel confident and grounded as they navigate their surroundings. In its study of the U.S. education system, Gallup found that talented principals lead schools to higher achievement. That means improving leadership is a great way for a principal to help his or her school. The lack of discipline in schools leads to increased absenteeism. Presently, students are brought up in a modern environment and it requires patience to raise them right. International schools in particular benefited from their global network. In the sections below, we describe the main themes that emerged from our coding and analysis of the 43 Coronavirus Chronicles interviews. The 2022-23 school year is shaping up to be a big year of challenges and transitions for educational technology. Do use technology to develop a balanced view of the world. I would say the creativity is just fantastic. During a crisis, leaders often try to minimize the damage, alleviate the pain, and restore order (p. 549), which conflicts with attempts to disrupt the organization and move it in a new direction. Students are more at peace and are reportedly able to concentrate better in classes. Week 39:1. doi: 10.1108/JEA-10-2015-0097, Tschannen-Moran, M., and Hoy, W. K. (2000). Glenn, a superintendent, shared: As far as food services, we provide food twice a week, our communities are roughly about 45% free and reduced lunch. Under the theme of disregarding managerial skills, bureaucratic obstacles w ere one of the m ain challenges faced . Dr. Suzanne Wesson, academic coordinator for Waldens Richard W. Riley College of Education and Human Sciences, thanked Porter for her insights and acknowledged the historic challenges facing educational leadership and administration in schools. by the administrators (11/20). School Leadersh. The latest educational trend in school is the use of technology. Because access could not be assumed even when students had or were provided with devices, innovative and practical, equitable solutions were required. It would require a new infrastructure that would add up to the costs. While the availability of these resources is not new, the broad-based implementation and long-overdue recognition of the availability and potential benefits of these resources is a significant change for many educators. These reasons make it difficult for schools to provide the best for their students. If sustainability is the looming challenge ahead, professional development is the perennial issue all tech leaders must think about every year, experts said. First, the relationships between ourselves and our interviewees were not strictly scripted. *Muzyamba M, Changala M (2019) Challenges faced by school management in the procurement of teaching and learning materials and their perceived effect on pupils' academic performance in selected secondary schools in Chipata District, Zambia. Explore the transformative power of PLCs! For example, one school district in Colorado offered 25 training sessions on Google Classroom the day before the district went live with remote learning. School administrators should plan to make it mandatory for parents to be involved in certain functions of the school. First, our school leaders repeatedly recognized their reliance on the collective wisdom that exists across organizations and geographic boundaries. Schools are facing increasing threats of cyberattacks, they are struggling to figure out how to use all the new technology they acquired during the pandemic in meaningful ways, and they are trying to figure out how to help students become more thoughtful and responsible digital citizens. 7 Big Challenges Faced by School Management & How To Overcome Them 7th July 2022 At present, one of the major issues that school administrators face is the enormous number of paper-based processes. 14, 234248. Learn how states are overhauling how reading is taught, and why one componentholding back students who arent reading on grade levelis among the most controversial requirements. Superville, D. R. (2020). In late January the New York Times asked, Is the world ready for the coronavirus? (Editorial Board, 2020). Theres a significant increase in domestic violence and child abuse. In the initial stages of the COVID-19 crisis response, educational leaders identified the need for frequent, often daily communication with teachers, students and parents. Int. Tackling those learners most struggling with literacy, for example, might lead a school to introduce more diverse and engaging texts in all classrooms and/or uncover other barriers to learning that when fixed could benefit additional students, or lead administrators to initiate targeted supports that could be applied in other subjects where different students lag behind. By submitting this form, I provide my signature, expressly consenting to calls, emails and/or texts regarding my educational options from Walden University and its affiliates and contractors using an automated dialing system to the number and email address provided. If some of these longer-term changes do indeed occur when the pandemic recedes, many of our interviewees will be ready to reap the promises of a newly reimagined world of education. Teachers are using AI to plan lessons, email parents, and help struggling students. Even though most districts have put the brakes on their virtual or hybrid learning programs or scaled them back significantly after the return to in-person learning, they should still be thinking about how to continue to make use of all the new devices purchased during the pandemic, said Joseph South, the chief learning officer at the International Society for Technology in Education. Instead, the technology should help teachers individualize instruction, thus making the technology a good use of financial resources. Flood your community with resources. *National Center for Education Statistics, Fast Facts: Back to School Statistics, on the Internet at http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=372. The blog posts that accompanied each new interview solicited viewers and listeners to participate in the series if they were interested and multiple school leaders took us up on that offer. Structures and systems of communication that existed prior to the pandemic were relied upon heavily to ensure that meaningful connections were maintained. This reflection on organizational possibilities and institutional futures is common during the reconstruction phase (Boin and Hart, 2003) of a crisis (see also Coombs, 2000; Heath, 2004; Boin et al., 2005; Jaques, 2009; Smith and Riley, 2012). Int. While a plethora of digital tools were available to almost everyone, the majority of schools chose to focus on using tools that were familiar to staff in order to, as Shameka, a high school principal said, reduce family confusion and make it so much easier for us to communicate.. Administrators say theyre navigating difficult choices about school safety and student discipline in a year when children are reeling and acting out. The icon for TikTok pictured in New York on Feb. 25, 2020. 1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. If you believe you can provide that kind of educational leadership, you can help yourself become a principal by enrolling in an education specialist degree program (EdS). The Challenges of School Administrators in Teaching and Learning 7, 4146. In addition to the more generalized research base, some crisis leadership research has been conducted on school settings specifically. It has not been easy for school administrators to integrate digital approaches to teaching in schools.Incorporating these trends comes with a lot of challenges in itself. Other critical tasks include robust communication, helping others engage in meaning-making for others, and, finally, reflecting on and learning from the crisis and rendering accountability regarding what worked and what did not. Blair, an international secondary school principal, expressed his satisfaction by stating, I think that we ended the year really well with a solid structure that allowed for both flexibility as well as enough structure to support students well.. Through this process, the initial set of codes and subcodes were refined and expanded based on the data set. The educators who we interviewed did heroic work during the first few months of the pandemic to combat food insecurity, care for the people around them, and ensure that learning still occurred for children. Prospective Washington state students are advised to contact the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction at 1-360-725-6275 or [emailprotected] to determine whether Waldens programs in the field of education are approved for teacher certification or endorsements in Washington state. And about three quarters of it is positivity. Walden University is accredited by The Higher Learning Commission, www.hlcommission.org. Aaron, a middle school assistant principal, recognized that educational communities have been thrust into a non-negotiable technological immersion course: I think it has just upped our technology. Each of these executive tasks has been unpacked in further detail in the scholarly literature and most of the elements in the framework from Boin, Kuipers, and Overdijk occur frequently in others conceptual models (see, e.g., Smith and Riley, 2012; Dckers et al., 2017). So every single day something goes home to all the parents, all the students, [and] all the teachers that is a message from me: heres how were doing, heres where we are, heres where were going, and then it celebrates student work, it celebrates the teachers work, there are video clips, and it just connects everyone back to school and parents and kids.