Educational Platform Task

SUPERINTENDENT DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM

EDUCATIONAL PLATFORM TASK

Introduction

Education is forever changing. An educational leader must have a foundation upon which to anchor and grow. This foundation is built from one’s personal belief system and one’s professional profile (knowledge, skills, attitudes and behaviors). This activity is to help you begin to identify and articulate your personal belief system as a Superintendent.

Belief system + Professional profile = Educational Platform

Educational Platform Directions

This task is to be completed individually, prior to the two-day Orientation Session. You may spend as little or as much time on the task as you deem appropriate. Write as little as you want but try to limit your response to one double-spaced page on each question. There will be no grading of this task. You should not discuss this task with anyone nor use any form of support material to complete this task. You may use a style guide of your choice and a spelling check (dictionary, Word Book, computer spellchecker, etc.). Your responses should be typed. Your responses should be self-proofed.

This task is about you. This task is for you. Respond to each platform in your own words, based upon your own beliefs. Write to reflect what you believe about the Superintendency. Focus your remarks on characteristics, such as leadership, power, responsibility, control, predictability, ethics, fairness, communication, vision, risk, diversity, etc.

Educational Platform

The Superintendent and Instructional Leadership

Roles--The Superintendent and the School Board

School Finance and the Superintendent

Strategic Leadership: The Superintendent’s Role

Personnel Management from the Superintendent’s Perspective

The Superintendent’s Personal Life

Organizational Leadership of the Superintendent

The Teachers’ Association and the Superintendent

The Superintendent and Political Leadership

Other platforms of your choice related to the superintendency

More information.....................................

Rationale and Guidelines

An individual’s educational leadership platform consists of a series of assumptions, theories, and beliefs usually expressed as declarative or normative statements comprising what she or he believes is possible, true, and desirable. The platform provides an underbidding framework that guides the individual’s thinking and behavior, and that shapes the decisions he or she makes about school leadership issues.

The process of developing a platform will be useful to associates clarifying their values and in synthesizing their thoughts about the superintendency. The associate benefits from reflecting upon the particular values, beliefs, and sentiments upon which his or her decisions and choices are made.

In addition, the finished product will be useful to associates for communicating to others in an articulate manner their professional positions on educational and leadership issues.

With these goals in mind, well written platform statements make clear the particular standards of practice the aspiring superintendent will use in judging his or her own performance, the actions of others, and the learning environment.

Beliefs and positions on issues are not stagnant, but are altered by one’s life experiences and reflection upon these experiences. This suggests that the platform is a living document which can be changed or revised over time.