Building the next generation of leaders
With its Leadership Academy, Floyd County Schools is aiming to develop leaders from within that fit into its cultural fabric.
Editor’s note: This is the first report in a two-part series on the Floyd County Schools Leadership Academy. Part One focuses on the origin and development of the academy. Part Two will run in Friday’s Rome News-Tribune and will focus on the reflections of three participants.
“How do we build leadership capacity?”
It’s a question Floyd County Schools Executive Director of Academics John Parker was tasked with answering upon being hired in 2016.
Ultimately, the solution he developed alongside Superintendent John Jackson and Executive Director of Technology and Media Services Craig Ellison was the founding of a Leadership Academy.
The first cohort of 10 employees mostly made up of teachers, completed the academy’s coursework last month.
Another 10 will start this month.
Going back to the interview process in spring 2016, Parker said the idea of a Leadership Academy, something requested by the board of education, was in the works. The main goal was to find a way of internally building instructional leaders the Floyd County Schools way, he added.
“Leadership is an everybody thing,” not just something for those who have been in the system the longest, Parker said. Also, the academy wasn’t meant to be a stepping stone to something like an assistant principal job, he continued. Rather, its aim was put in place leaders within each building, regardless of position.
“It allows us to take members that are currently working for us … and we get to teach them the Floyd County way,” Ellison said. “Leadership in a book is one thing, but leadership when you walk in the door each day is a completely different concept.”
Drawing on examples from other school systems, a three-semester course that’s open for anyone in the system to apply was developed. Applications were sent out and a scoring guide was established. Those with the top 10 highest scores, out of 40 to 50 applicants, were selected to participate.
Monthly classes introduced participants to a different aspect of the system, such as maintenance, personnel, academics or technology, that they may be completely unaware of. Heads of these departments focused on the responsibilities and decisions included under their domain.
Overall, this process is meant to provide a bigger picture of what it takes to run a school system, something Ellison refers to as the “10,000-foot level” where “the horizon is all around you.”
This big picture is something participants, even if they aren’t in a leadership role, can share in a ground-level approach to providing depth to the knowledge of a system’s operations, Parker said.
Ellison helped to expose the “backbone” of the tech department, explaining how internet reaches their schools and showing them the data center at the central office. Essentially this showed all the technology operating behind the scenes of classrooms, he added.
A Google Classroom, a virtual workspace, complete with training tutorials, documents and videos, was set up by Ellison to model in the academy the same technology teachers use. This allowed for 24-hour access and collaboration for participants to share ideas without meeting, but when they did, they could focus on guest speakers, he added.
Barry Posner’s “The Leadership Challenge” was the focus of a book study, which had pairs of participants make presentations.
Individually, they had to formulate and present an action research project. An independent panel then judged and scored them, with Pepperell Elementary Michelle Clay being selected for an internship, where she will spend six weeks each at Alto Park Elementary, Model Middle and Coosa High.
“No one has ever taken a role in leadership and been fully prepared,” said Ellison, who has been in a leadership role for seven years. “We just worked up into those positions.”
But the long-term benefit of the academy is providing hands-on experience before potentially taking on these roles, Ellison said.
Administrative work can “grind people into the dirt,” Parker said, and it quickly becomes known if these roles are a proper fit. Early exposure can help individuals figure this out.
As the older generation of administrators nears retirement, systems are faced with finding those to take their place.
“Ultimately, you want to know who is going to replace you,” Parker said.