Recommendations & Lessons Learned

        As I come to the end of my Superintendent certification program, I have been asked to reflect upon recommendations and lessons learned through my internship activities.  What follows is a summary of those recommendations.

Job Entry Plan

Dr. Creel spoke last Thursday on the importance of having a job entry plan. While mine is fairly rudimentary, I hope to improve it over time. Having a strong, effective job entry plan can make your transition into a new (or out of an old) role much smoother. I believe him 100%. It makes perfect sense.

Anyway, enjoy...

Comprehensive Competency Reflection

Below are the results of my competency reflection.  While it took awhile to write, this certainly shows how busy the last 8 months have been.  Please feel free to reply with your thoughts and suggestions.
 

Position & Leadership Goals

Position and Leadership Goal

As I navigate through my career, my career goals have progressed.  Initially, my goal had been to serve as a high school principal or possibly a Superintendent or Assistant Superintendent.  I have discovered, though, that I have a strong affinity toward Academia.  I can now say that my long-term career goals include ultimately serving as a member of doctoral faculty in Educational Leadership. 

Competency Review - End of Program

As I compared my previous responses from September to my current responses in April to the superintendent competencies, I was pleased to see that I had improved significantly.  The large majority of my responses were considered strengths.  Specifically, Competencies 1, 2, 5, 6, 7, and 10 all were areas in which I scored myself to be all strengths.

Most of the remaining competencies were scored mostly strengths, with a few competent and very few needs improvement.  Competency 8 is the only competency area in which there remains significant work to be done. 

Within Competency 8, the primary driver (for improvement) seems to be a lack of “on the job” type of experience.  To date in my career, I still have very limited experiences in working directly with Board members, working with the budget (on the district level), and most of the other “district level” activities within the competency.

Overall, I am very pleased with my progress since September.  I have gained greater insight into the role of the superintendent and have more confidence in my abilities to function in a leadership role at the district level.

The following is a summary of my findings: