Today's teachers live in a society and work in a profession where demands are continually

changing and expanding. To prepare their stu dents to be successful in this society, teachers
must be willing to learn continuously, expand their own abilities, and assume ever-greater lead
ership roles. Principals must create an environment that supports col laboration among teachers;
provides time for teachers' professional development; and recognizes, rewards, and celebrates
the concept of the teacher as leader.

The Principal as Chief Learning Officer of the School

As the new work of the formative leaders is different, so too are the required skills. The chief

learning officer must help the faculty and staff overcome their fear of failure and grapple with the

difficult problems, rather than only with the easy issues. Ironically, it is in school where we initially

are taught to avoid difficult learning. It is part of the reward system of the classroom. Those

students who know the answer are rewarded by good grades and by the teacher's approval and

praise. Those who do not know the answer stay silent, avoid the teacher, and hope that they remain

unnoticed. This lesson, learned early in life, stays with us into adulthood, where we are rewarded

for what we know rather than for being open to what we have yet to learn.

CLO’s need to focus more on the learning opportunities provided students and on the work students

do, and less on the teaching process and the work teachers do. By shifting this focus, we can also

change the leadership dynamics. Direct supervision of the work of the teacher, although still a

necessary part of the instructional improvement process, is of less importance than working

collaboratively with teachers in planning, scheduling, and leading students in academic work. The

skills of observing, evaluating, and directing need to be supplemented with the skills of listening,

questioning, probing, and guiding; a leadership style that might be characterized as interrogative

rather than declarative.

To be successful, the CLO must become adept at managing by wandering around (MBWA), which

is really the art and practice of listening and learning. It is the quintessential practice for building

relationships and establishing trust. MBWA gets the leader out of the office, increasing visibility

and contact with the people doing the work -- the students and the staff.

The principal’s direct customer is the teacher. The work of the principal as CLO begins with

spending time -- lots of it -- with teachers, in and out of classrooms, engaged in conversations about
teaching and learning. It is through this process, and within this kind of open, inviting

organizational culture that teacher leadership is likely to emerge.

Emerging leadership theory places considerable emphasis on the power of conversation in driving

improvement. School faculties typically engage in numerous daily conversations, in small groups

and one-on-one, about all kinds of issues and concerns. The challenge for the CLO is to provide

new information, to provide opportunities for collaborative planning and problem solving, and to

lead the faculty in seeking to understand each other and in making sense of what schooling is all

about. Leading faculty talk about beliefs, vision, mission, student work, and student outcomes is a

powerful tool for improving teaching and learning in the school. Ideas and information are the

basic tools for creating a school full of leaders who elicit the best from their colleagues and students

alike.

Schools face enormous social and economic problems. Many students come to school bringing the

accumulated baggage of a society that does not provide nearly well enough for its children. The

demand to do better with less in an unfriendly political climate requires that school faculty and staff

work smarter. Working smarter simply means that the individual talents of everyone in the school

must be maximized for the collective benefit of the school and its customers. Productive teams

engaged in collaborative, data-driven problem solving can provide the needed impetus for working

smarter and, thereby, improving the teaching and learning process in the school.

Positive school change is neither top down nor bottom up. It is, instead, interactive and

participative at every grade and department level. The principal’s role as Chief Learning Officer of

the school is to build an organizational climate that encourages and supports emergent leadership

throughout the school.

Teacher leadership is best served when the principal understands and values the Chief Learning

Officer role. In this role, specific value-added activities both inform and drive the school

improvement process.

In today's environment, producing effective change and improvement requires an altogether new

and different set of skills. Listening, asking questions, engaging faculty and staff in conversation

about teaching and learning, collecting and analyzing data, and benchmarking promising practices
are replacing top-down driven directives, traditional models of supervision, and the expectation that

the leader has all the answers. These new role expectations provide new opportunities for

leadership to emerge from the teaching ranks. Changing demographics and the rigors of preparing

students for the twenty-first century require that we rethink what we teach, how we teach, and how

we assess student and teacher performance. These changes will have to be made at the school level

by principals willing to serve as Chief Learning Officers of their schools and at the classroom level

by teacher leaders capable of restructuring the educational process.

http://docplayer.net/149902298-Module-2-lead-curriculum-implementation-and-enrichment.html

A very important part of curriculum implementation is that the teacher should consider carefully
the order in which learning targets should be learnt. It is logical to put learning targets requiring
lower level skills before those requiring higher level skills, for example, teaching the children to draw
lines before teaching them to write. In some cases, the targets themselves may form a definite
sequence or hierarchy when the skills actually come in a continuous or chained sequence, for
example, putting on a shirt and buttoning it up. Some higher level targets can be learnt more quickly
after the pre-requisite skills have been mastered. For example, learning to write will become easier
when eye-hand co-ordination skill has been acquired. It follows that unrelated targets can be learnt
in any order.

The school administrators play an important role in shaping the school curriculum because they are
the people who are responsible in the formulation of the schools’ vision, philosophy, mission and
objectives. They provide necessary leadership in evaluating teaching personnel and school program.
Keeping records of curriculum and reporting learning outcomes are also the managers’
responsibilities.”

The school administrators have the responsibility of running the entire school effectively. They have
to oversee the smooth transition of the child from one grade level to another and they should see to
it that the curriculum is implemented vertically or horizontally with very minimal overlaps. Instead
there should be continuity, relevance, balance, so that overall curriculum will produce a well
rounded person.”

As the school principal, you are expected to take on a leadership role inthe implementation of a
curriculum, whether new or old.

Indeed, the successful implementation of a curriculum requires asupportive school environment

where there is trust and opencommunication among the school head, teachers, and parents. You,
asthe school principal, hold the key to its success. Therefore, you shouldhave an in-depth knowledge
of the planned curriculum change and theimplementation process. Addressing the various factors
that affect thesuccessful implementation of the curriculum is not easy. You may oftenneed to
exercise your leadership skills to meet the needs of your teachersand students. Oftentimes, you will
have to work harder and smarter tobring people together, keep the ball rolling, and encourage
everyone tofocus on the school’s goal of providing quality education