School Leadership
Statement of Purpose
By
Agustinus Prih Adiartanto
By
Agustinus Prih Adiartanto
School as a formal educational institution involves some major elements in its management; the school staff, parents, and the government. The success of education depends on the cooperative work of those elements. Bringing the school’s vision and missions into line, the school leaders (principal-vice principal) and the teachers have to cooperate to serve the students.
Unfortunately, as we can see in many schools, the school’s vision and missions have not been appropriately internalised in the work of the teachers. What mostly happen is that most teachers would slightly know their school’s vision and missions. It seems very unlikely that they appropriately comprehend the school’s vision and mission and eventually translate them into decision-making process, policies issue, and the instructional designs. Consequently, the personal and institutional values do not often get along in good harmony. In other words, the corporate culture at school has not been developed yet.
The question is what makes many school principals fail to bring their schools into better conditions. This phenomenon is easily understood since almost all school principals in Indonesia are assigned to assume the position on the basis of seniority. Little has been done to train future school leaders that are able to anticipate future challenges. Thus, leadership management is carried out without competence, capability, and professionalism.
In many cases, it often happens that the leader cannot find the best solution to various problems quickly and properly. For example, supervision as one of his responsibilities does not work well. Internal supervision plays a major role in enhancing teachers’ performance as well as maintaining school’s effectiveness. When supervision fails, teachers are more likely to work less and less optimally. Even worse, their working performance tends to decrease year by year. When there is no performance appraisal to stimulate them to do their job better, there will be no challenge to work better. The absence of appreciation towards excellent achievement makes the teachers’ paradigm stagnant.
For this reason, the empowerment of the staff, parents, society, and the government becomes the ultimate issue to work on in order to get the institution fully developed. This can be carried out only if the school leaders have enough leadership capacity to make quick, right, and decisive solutions to many problems. When the supervision going well, teachers are motivated to work even better. To carry out the supervision effectively, it’s important to keep all the elements fully well-informed about the supervision instruments.
Being assigned as the vice-principal for curriculum affairs since July 2003, I find that it is not an easy job. Besides the government new curriculum is to be carried out, I also have the school’s vision and mission to be internalised in the curriculum. Consequently, I have to modify the curriculum that brings some administration changes to work on. In addition, the most challenging task for me to do is to bring and to motivate the teachers to adapt their paradigm to the new curriculum.
Four years in this position, I enjoy my job very much and I am glad that in my own way I have brought some positive changes for my school. Through the Indonesian Secondary Education Development Program (ISEDP), I hope I can get more information, experience, and enlightenment from all about school leadership, in order to raise a new spirit in my job to be a better teacher.
Unfortunately, as we can see in many schools, the school’s vision and missions have not been appropriately internalised in the work of the teachers. What mostly happen is that most teachers would slightly know their school’s vision and missions. It seems very unlikely that they appropriately comprehend the school’s vision and mission and eventually translate them into decision-making process, policies issue, and the instructional designs. Consequently, the personal and institutional values do not often get along in good harmony. In other words, the corporate culture at school has not been developed yet.
The question is what makes many school principals fail to bring their schools into better conditions. This phenomenon is easily understood since almost all school principals in Indonesia are assigned to assume the position on the basis of seniority. Little has been done to train future school leaders that are able to anticipate future challenges. Thus, leadership management is carried out without competence, capability, and professionalism.
In many cases, it often happens that the leader cannot find the best solution to various problems quickly and properly. For example, supervision as one of his responsibilities does not work well. Internal supervision plays a major role in enhancing teachers’ performance as well as maintaining school’s effectiveness. When supervision fails, teachers are more likely to work less and less optimally. Even worse, their working performance tends to decrease year by year. When there is no performance appraisal to stimulate them to do their job better, there will be no challenge to work better. The absence of appreciation towards excellent achievement makes the teachers’ paradigm stagnant.
For this reason, the empowerment of the staff, parents, society, and the government becomes the ultimate issue to work on in order to get the institution fully developed. This can be carried out only if the school leaders have enough leadership capacity to make quick, right, and decisive solutions to many problems. When the supervision going well, teachers are motivated to work even better. To carry out the supervision effectively, it’s important to keep all the elements fully well-informed about the supervision instruments.
Being assigned as the vice-principal for curriculum affairs since July 2003, I find that it is not an easy job. Besides the government new curriculum is to be carried out, I also have the school’s vision and mission to be internalised in the curriculum. Consequently, I have to modify the curriculum that brings some administration changes to work on. In addition, the most challenging task for me to do is to bring and to motivate the teachers to adapt their paradigm to the new curriculum.
Four years in this position, I enjoy my job very much and I am glad that in my own way I have brought some positive changes for my school. Through the Indonesian Secondary Education Development Program (ISEDP), I hope I can get more information, experience, and enlightenment from all about school leadership, in order to raise a new spirit in my job to be a better teacher.
0 komentar:
Posting Komentar