Why do I want to be Principal in a District of Columbia Public School - Admission/Application Essay Example

 Why do I want to be Principal in a District of Columbia Public School? I want to be Principal in a District of Columbia Public School because I like the idea of having a wider sphere of influence over the direction of the pursuit of academic excellence while simultaneously maintaining personal one-on-one contact with the children, their parents, and the teaching faculty under my skillful guidance. Also, I know of the special challenges that DC Public schools face, such as the high numbers of low income students who fall beneath national academic standards and teachers who teach in hostile environments. I believe I would enjoy the challenge of working toward making my school assignment a lighthouse on a dark and foggy night. Specific examples demonstrating how students increased academically under my leadership I have used a method known to some in the school system as Positive Action or ‘PA.’ I noted that many of the academic failures with which we were faced came from people who stuck in a vicious cycle of self-hatred and emotional and/or verbal abuse. Those are not good circumstances under which a mind is free and clear to learn because so many obstacles have to be removed in order to get through to the learning processes. By implementing PA with parents and students who were not emotionally equipped to confront the challenges of providing a supportive environment in which their children could learn, I was able to teach one family how to channel negative energy into positive energy by heightening their sensitivity to certain behaviors that, for lack of a better analogy, kept blowing out the candles during a blackout. I knew the family was at least making an effort to change gears when the student’s grades began to improve from D’s and F’s to high C’s and B’s over a four-week period. Sometimes, it’s small adjustments and fine tuning; other times, there are major issues that get in the way, such as actual physical abuse in which authority intervention becomes necessary. In another situation, a fifth-grader who seemed geared toward self-hatred was brought to a higher academic level of achievement by being taught to replace self-defacing thoughts of can’t-do with can-do’s. The idea was to cause the student to refocus and re-channel their thought energy on what was possible instead of what was impossible. Improvement didn’t happen overnight, but it happened before I left. What specific leadership qualities do you possess that correlate to your desire to become a principal in DC Public schools? It is the responsibility of all leaders to have the kinds of qualities that people want to mimic or imitate, so it is my philosophy that leaders are visionaries, inspirers, and the kind of people who live the lives they tell others to live. Principals specifically have to have the ability to lead with compassion and let their charges, faculty, staff and students, know what they expect and then create an environment in which the expected is not impossible to do. I believe myself to be that visionary who has lived a life that I am proud to put on display so that others can see where I am in life and behave accordingly. I also know that DC Public schools have the single visionary focus of making sure its students have equal access to quality education, which means that all supporting systems point the way to creating an open, fair and nurturing learning environment. The leadership quality that I have is my elevated level of high expectations; because at the end of the day, those whom you lead will only do what they think you think they are capable of. A time in my career when I did not reach a performance goal I once had a pipedream or idealistic goal to bring in nothing but the highest quality teachers under a set of criteria that was meant to eliminate those who were uncommitted to the children’s futures or were just there to pass the time until a more lucrative career could be found. The plan was to weed out those who were not dedicated to teaching by asking more structured interview questions, such as what is your philosophy of teaching or how do you encourage creativity or what would you do in the case of a student who refuses to participate in class or turn in timely homework assignments, if at all. This goal was not reached because there were many factors to consider, such as teacher stress, burnout, those coming up for retirement who were simply whistling their way to the finish line, classic life interruptions…the kinds of things that can easily turn a very qualified teacher into a basket-case. I learned that while there is no such thing as the “perfect” teacher, there is such a thing as contingency planning for those moments when all of the major hopes for the future want to turn into dust. I decided that an adjustment was needed in my leadership style to fill in the gaps where the measure of quality is only as good as the teachers willing to serve. Some may read that as a lowering of standards to accommodate what was available. I simply changed the criteria to allow for shortcomings that did not quite meet my perfectionist standards. I did not lower the bar on quality control, but I did make some prime adjustments in the contingency plan to take up the slack. Read More