The Indonesian Education for Social Reconstruction, Peace and Justice

Stephen Hughes

Developing effective principalships
by Doni Koesoema A

Boston College High School is a Jesuit Catholic college-preparatory school for young men founded in 1863. It is a great opportunity for me to learn from this school because it is well known that every Jesuit School brings with them long tradition about academic excellence. Mr. Stephen Hughes, the BC High principal, told me about his efforts to maintain and nurture long tradition of Jesuit academic excellence on education, his role and responsibilities as school leader.

As school principal, his main role in the leadership is to be the leader in the students' academic and spiritual growth. As instructional leader, he is responsible to promote academic excellence and spiritual formation of the students, to ensure that teacher give the best teaching methods and learning experience to the students as good as we can. It means that priority work should be given to the improvement of student learning and classroom teaching.

BC High-Boston

Working at the Jesuit School well known for its religious education the development of spiritual character of the student is important. He takes care of the spiritual and religious formation of the students as part of its academic excellence. For nurturing the religious formation, the principal work with the campus ministry to organize religious activities and formation, like retreat programs, consultancy, and teacher who always ready to listen to the students problems. Every year, during the Easter season, for example, BC High student organizes the prayer of the station of the cross by doing pilgrimage and pray to the seven big churches around the school. The integration of academic and spiritual formation is the core values that BC High want to promote.

Managing resources, time and human nature

The main constraints to arrive at this ideal are managing resources, time and human nature (we are limited being). Managing the school constrains is part of principal expertise. Success on managing such constrains would improve principal competence as effective leader. Principal is responsible to manage the limited resources of the school so that these resources can be used to maximize student's learning. This includes effective budgeting and allocating money for the development of academic achievement, dealing with the tuition, improvements of school facilities, making more teacher, more opportunities for teacher professional formation, etc. Important part of this role is balancing the need of the school with the available resources the school have so that he could guarantee that school priority for improving student achievement is maintained. In this case, for example, providing the new technology that could improve students learning is a big deal. Every classroom at BC has its multimedia technology for learning. School also provides a good laboratory so that student and teachers can make an effective laboratory works. In this school every teacher has its own notebook/laptop to stimulate many methods of using media so that teaching and learning experience might be richer and engaging. Even, in the junior school, they now have a big smart screen that is very helpful to assist students learning.

Effective principal have the capability to manage the time. There are many tings to be done on the school and it seems that the time available is not enough. There are many ideas and programs that can be done, but time constraint require principal to decide priorities so that the improvements are the best result of this time management. Time allocation is always the big constrain that may impede the principal effectiveness.

Principal should also have the capability to understand the limit of human nature. They responsible to make sure that every individual working in the school finds safety (physically, psychologically) so that they could grow more mature as human being. Teacher as human being has its limits, energy, time, the weakness of physical condition, tired, frustrated with the students, administration, etc. Sometimes this constraint comes from teacher's own small world of teaching, thus it is difficult for them to see their own experience in a wider context. “People is always a wild card variable”. This thing is all about people, not schedule. It is about relationship. Thus, it is important for effective principal to deal with relationship among teachers and their community and to create school as caring community in which every individual in the school be respected and find that school is meaningful place for them.

Maintaining school culture and tradition

Maintaining the school tradition and culture is the first challenge that he faces as school leader. Effective leader should have good and healthy appreciation of his school culture and tradition. BC High has a long history of its education expertise. Many leaders come and go. They are part of the school tradition. Much of what he does is to follow the strong tradition of the school by learning from the leaders that had come before him. Knowing the good heritage of the school, its history and mission, thus enriched by the school culture and tradition is part of leader expertise. School culture is an enriching asset for school leader to improve their leadership.

To create such a climate, principal need to have trust to their students and their fellow teacher and faculty staff. The school has a good composition of the junior, middle and senior teacher. This is a strength that could be maximizing for teacher professional development. That is why Hughes prefers to begin creating such a culture of trust by promoting collegiality among teacher. He tries to get the teacher faculty work together. The trust is actualized by giving them autonomy and participation in the decision making, giving them the authority to make decision as wide as possible, support them to realize what they have decided, and hold them accountable for their decision. He did this by formatting various committees. He gives the committees real areas of authority and responsibility.

Being involved on the school decision maker is not an easy task especially when school culture is not conducive to such idea. Some of the faculty staff has no experience with this experience. Some times they do not want to be given such trust and responsibilities. But the effective principal should deal with this and dare to put his trust to them as part of their responsibilities. The challenge is that when you found that they do something wrong. How can you accompany them and guide them to make a good decision? It happens also when the school gives the decision making to the students as well. Thus, it is important task of the principal to have the capabilities and competent to empower their fellow teacher and student to be responsible, respectful and consistence with their own decision.

Using symbolical means

An effective principle is capable of using symbolical means to promote collegiality, trust and sense of participation. Every time the academic year begins, school has the program for faculty staff gathering. Usually, the principal gives speeches to the whole community. He used this occasion to involve others teacher and staff faculty to give their speeches to the community. He uses this symbolical time to stimulate faculty members about their sense of belonging about their school. It is a kind of speech of welcome back to the school activities. Of course, they have heard quite frequently principal speech. By giving them opportunities to share their own experience, hope, and mission in the beginning of the academic year, they could nurture the sense of mission and community among faculty staff. The principal believes that it is the responsibilities of every members of the school community to nurture the school mission, not just the principal. He not only gives occasion to his fellow teacher, but also to the student. Because student should have their own voices, their own plan and decision to build their own life in the future. They should take control of their own life.

The distributed leadership is an important role of principal as instructional leader. To give such opportunities to participate in the school activities is his practice of leadership. He believes about the democratic leadership in which every individual is responsible for their friends and community, so the school become the caring community. On the pedagogic side, peer tutoring and senior tutoring groups among students are created to nurture the sense of responsibility. Trust should be the core value that animates all school activities. Developing a community of learning is one of the steps that BC principal does to improve students learning and nurturing their spiritual formation. His ideas about the leadership and school culture is that every individual in the school is the reflection of our mission and school culture. (al)