'natural' leaders and nature of discipline
Peggy Cowan ( pcowan@educ.state.ak.us )
Wed, 17 Jul 1996 14:58:40 -0800
I agree with Bob's assessment of born leaders. There are probably people
that by their temperament will never choose to be leaders and others to whom
it comes naturally, but the bulk of people and the bulk of those in our
institutes are somewhere in between. Since it was one of our referents,
I'll use an Alaska Writing Project example. Each year the instructors in
the Writing Project nominate fellows (graduates of the Basic three week
institute) to go on to the leadership institute. There was one individual
who was not nominated in this round. For a variety of reasons this same
person later joined the leadership group and became a leader. His first
attempt at leading at a summer institute could be only characterized as a
failure. The project continued to work with him and he is now a critical
instructional leader of the project. People who do not know his history
would identify him as one of those with a calling for leadership as Dennis
phrased it. Those who knew him in his early leadership opportunities never
perceived those traits. He is a leader who was definitely "made."
Another teacher who is now a leader in the state's Math Consortium was an
elementary teacher who "failed" the leadership cut in the Writing Project.
She confided in me early on that she didn't fit in there, but felt
comfortable with the dynamics of the Math Consortium (which I was then
coordinating) and asked to participate in leadership roles in the math
group. She became a critical leader in that group. So, there is anecdotal
evidence that leaders can be made.
The second example re-raises what I think is an interesting question that
Susan posed about the whether the nature of the discipline makes a
difference. I don't think the principles change between disciplines, but
the change process might. For instance, as a math/science person working
with elementary teachers the change strategy is very different. In math, we
often are encouraging teachers who have been using one approach for a long
time with a degree of success, to change that approach. In science, we are
often encouraging teachers who typically teach reading, writing and math to
include science in their instruction and then to do so in what research
tells us is an appropriate manner for their students. Do we need different
kind of leaders to accomplish these two different strategies? What do you
think?
Peggy Cowan, AK
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