In my opinion, the principal's learning ability, decision-making ability, innovation ability and personality charm are the core factors to promote school modernization. During my nine years as principal, I have also been exploring how to improve the principal's leadership.
learning ability
Peter. Shengji pointed out in the Fifth Age: "The only lasting advantage in the future is your ability to learn faster than your competitors." The principal's learning ability refers to the principal's ability to continuously acquire knowledge through various channels and means and strive to improve his own quality.
1 Establish correct educational values in professional system training.
As a principal, you must first be an excellent teacher. We must have a complete and mature understanding of the teaching system and value connotation of this subject, and be able to control and innovate easily.
As a principal, you must be better at running a school than an excellent teacher. Running a school needs to pay attention to more students, and have a systematic understanding and grasp of the school-running concept and behavior, school management and strategy.
2. Build the spiritual culture of the school through extensive and comprehensive absorption.
School is a comprehensive carrier. With the development of the times, it bears more and more social functions, including students' personal safety, physical and mental health, social stability, regional development and other responsibilities. Then as a principal, you must be able to do education in addition to education. So we dabble in all kinds of books, exchange and learn with all kinds of people, and strive to form a comprehensive knowledge structure system. For example, absorb ideas such as pedagogy, biology and philosophy, and learn knowledge such as enterprise management, brand creation and WeChat marketing. So as to learn to analyze the macro and micro environment of the school and locate the spiritual and cultural system of the school.
Establish the top-level design of the school in the extended practical thinking.
Qian Zhongshu said: "Reading can't just look at the eyes, nor just at the brain, but at the gods outside the two." The extended practical thinking is "divine reading". Whether it is a book with words or a book without words, we should not only understand the essence of the book, but also integrate our own opinions and apply them.
The concept system of any school is unique, because seeking a suitable development path based on different school backgrounds and connotations is similar to "divine reading". Each branch of top-level design is an annotation of school spirit and culture, and also defines the brand and personality of school education; It is not only the practical design of the definition of school education, but also the value orientation of all teachers and students' teaching and learning behavior.
decision-making authority
Management decisions must be made under the condition that experience, knowledge, information and thinking cooperate with each other and play a common role, and have broad vision and profound insight. A decision-making principal can lead the school to build its own brand through a series of scientific decisions.
1 take curriculum reform as the core of decision-making.
Curriculum is the core content of school education. In order to meet the needs of students' individualized development for course learning, our school has adopted the reform strategy of "integrating national basic courses with school-based, serializing the development of school-specific courses, diversifying students' individualized courses, and moderately extending the courses of community activities". The exclusive "course package" formed by the four types of courses is based on students' interests and hobbies, with students' evaluation and participation as assessment indicators, which makes the educational content more diversified and allows "colorful courses" to lead students to grow up healthily and happily.
2. Pay attention to organizational culture.
Culture is an important embodiment of school education. A management master drew a broken circle on the blackboard, and then said, "If management is to be complete, it is necessary to leave a gap for subordinates to fill." This strategy of "round if not round, full if not satisfied" is a kind of management wisdom and a unique management decision. Our school has established the class culture "one class, one product" project and the grade culture "one level, one specialty" project, which has left a "gap" for the management of class teachers and grade directors, and left room for their creative work, which is more targeted and proactive.
creativity
The times call for management innovation, and management innovation calls for innovation subjects. The principal's innovative ability is the embodiment of the principal's innovative ability and spirit, that is, the principal must dare to innovate and will innovate.
1 innovate management system according to development needs.
Schools should grow up according to their own "development needs" and form their own distinctive personality characteristics and brand effects. Management system is the basis of educational management reform. I have outlined it in my last article "A Picture, Management Evolution of a School in 7 Years". Our school-running practice has also precipitated a kind of "management culture"-management is service and management is education (see also the article "Management is education and management is service" issued earlier).
2. Innovative evaluation method based on problem solving.
An innovative principal knows that there are always more solutions than problems. Einstein once said: "Everyone has talent, but if a fish is judged by its ability to climb trees, it will always think it is stupid." At present, the single means of educational evaluation makes us have to think about reforming the school evaluation system. I wrote The Soil of Collective Struggle Can Make Individualized Seeds Grow Better —— On School Performance Management.
3. Let interests lead the innovation of educational means.
Fully innovate and use modern teaching methods, share teachers' professional achievements, accumulate excellent educational achievements, and make their benefits promote school modernization. Our school has established "two digital platforms"-digital campus management platform and digital teaching resource platform, which have the functions of paperless office, information teaching, networked teaching and research, resource management and intelligent educational administration, and realize the efficient management of all work in the school. Externally, make full use of the school website, QQ group, WeChat official account, etc. Promote home-school interaction and foreign exchange, show the achievements of school education and teaching, and promote the school brand.
Ability to motivate
Charm is the crystallization of wisdom, the embodiment of charm and the embodiment of leadership art of principals in the construction of cadres, teachers and cohesion education teams.
1 value leading, sand tower.
Strong appeal must be based on correct values. It took more than a year to collect the suggestions and expert opinions of every teacher, parents and students from bottom to top, and summarize the results. After three years of brand building and the practice of many innovative projects in the 13th Five-Year Plan, teachers are allowed to undertake voluntarily, choose independently and innovate cooperatively. It will be better to let every member of the school know the goal and function of his words and deeds.
2 know people and be good at their duties, and form a team.
Know people and make good use of 5% philosophy, find out what they are good at, and give them considerable positions and responsibilities. Appreciate the growth of every cadre and teacher, and let them complement each other in the process of achieving team goals. School-level cadres not only pay attention to the combination of grades, ages, disciplines, personalities and specialties, but also boldly implement the cadre rotation system to cultivate all-round quality school-level cadres. At the same time of decentralization, we fully supported and fostered the relevant work of each center and trained a group of reserve cadres with strong comprehensive ability.
3. Cultivate incentives and achieve teachers.
"Before you become a leader, success is only related to your own growth. When you become a leader, success is related to the growth of others. Only when the leader succeeds can the leader succeed (Jack? Welch). To employ people, we must educate people.
Guided by the concept of "teachers are courses", the school follows the training strategy of "problems are topics, teaching is research, and growth is achievement", so that every teacher with different levels and characteristics can find his own value and life direction. Projects such as menu-based training, scholarly campus, intelligent teachers' forum, electronic growth files of teachers, development of school-based teaching materials, personalized courses, student associations and project innovation have led, radiated and broken through the colorful lives of teachers and promoted the sustainable development of quality schools.
In short, the promotion of the principal's leadership is a complex project, but for me personally, I regard work as a life practice to improve my experience, personality, mentality and self-cultivation.
Five Skills of Improving the Principal's Leadership
There is no doubt that the principal's leadership plays an important role in the development of the school, but it is not easy to cultivate this ability. I think the generation of the principal's leadership should go through five kinds of training.
First, practice the laws of education and abide by them. Abiding by the education law means that state organs and their staff, social organizations and citizens consciously choose educational behavior according to the requirements of education laws and regulations, so that the education law can be implemented.
As a school legal person, the first step of the principal's work is to cultivate compliance with the education law. Only by observing the education law can we lay a solid foundation for the school to run the school and teach according to law, ensure that the principal's professional development will not go astray, maintain the initial heart of education, and wholeheartedly "educate the world's talents" as Mencius said.
Second, practice behavior organization. From the perspective of behavioral organization, the school is also a social organization. The headmaster is at the highest level of this organization, which embodies the organizational control of school leaders, that is, in order to achieve the school-running goal, different types of leaders should be organically combined according to their talents and objective responsibilities in the school environment.
Practice has repeatedly proved that the headmaster's scientific and reasonable organization and control of the school leadership structure can double the development momentum of the school and is of great significance to the healthy development of students and the professional development of teachers.
Third, cultivate interpersonal skills. In a sense, the essence of management is the process of interpersonal communication. Under the background of school education, interpersonal relationship management is very important, which is related to the resolution of school contradictions, the improvement of school efficiency and the promotion of school reputation, and has an important impact on the social and economic benefits of the school. Handle it properly and manage it smoothly, otherwise it will lead to chaos in the school.
The interpersonal relationship management in modern school management is manifested in the management of teacher-student relationship, colleague relationship and social communication relationship.
Principals need to cultivate good interpersonal skills that can stand the test, communicate effectively, coordinate efficiently, guide in time and resolve reasonably, handle the relationship with superiors, peers and subordinates, and build an atmospheric, efficient, United, harmonious and invincible education team for the development of school education, as President Mao Zedong said.
Fourth, cultivate respect ethics. Respect is a psychological tendency that people long for positive affirmation and recognition from others, and it is a normal psychological demand in the process of social communication.
As far as the process of school education is concerned, respect is an ethics in the situation of school education. In school, mutual respect between people, especially the respect of principals for teachers and students, can make the school harmonious and efficient, and education naturally occurs.
Sales psychology has a principle-there are two ways to make customers accept your opinions and feel proud: one is to make customers feel that some decisions are made by themselves; The other is to make concessions in small places, so that customers feel that his opinions and ideas are correct and respected.
So sales experts never say that they have won customers. They only advise customers to promote sales while making them feel respected. The ultimate goal of promotion is to clinch a deal, saying that winning customers not only does not mean clinching a deal, but will arouse customers' disgust. In school management, the work of managers can also be regarded as the work of selling ideas and persuading people to a certain extent, so principals should pay attention to cultivating their own respect ethics.
Fifth, cultivate the teaching and research skills of class spirit. The school's work is centered on teaching, so teaching is the most important way to highlight the principal's leadership function. To cultivate leadership, principals need to take the classroom as the starting point and the foothold, do a good job in teaching and research, and promote classroom reform.
There are mainly some forms:
1. Do lesson study from daily teaching. Take the teaching and research group or grade group as the teaching and research unit of a class, find out the problems existing in the class with collective strength, discuss the teaching difficulties of the class, summarize the successful experience of the class and reflect on the shortcomings.
2. Study on heterogeneous lessons in the same class. Its purpose is to build a good communication platform for teachers, promote mutual learning and improve together.
3. A case study of "multi-teachers under one roof" cooperative teaching. "Multi-teachers under one roof" collaborative teaching refers to a discussion teaching mode in which three or more teachers from different disciplines form a collaborative teaching team, * * * jointly undertake the same subject or teaching task, and * * * jointly teach.
This kind of lesson learning not only implements the basic concept of teamwork, but also greatly broadens the thinking space in the classroom.