The work and responsibilities of a supervisor in the education field are pretty diverse, in line with the complexity of the environment around an educational institution. Thus, a diverse set of skills is needed to successfully perform a job up to the task, concerning the importance of the supervisor’s role in a school community.
Many of these skills can be classified in categories: Skills regarding the professional relationship between the supervisor and the teachers, how capable he or she is to determine with accuracy current scenarios, the abilities to plan for desired changes in the system and the capacity to evaluate performance and results.
Interpersonal Skills
As in any working environment, a professional relationship with coworkers is crucial for being able to communicate effectively and be able to help as an engine of desirable changes in the school staff, particularly with the teachers. A healthy relationship with the teachers helps relate to them.
However, since this is about human beings and personalities, there is no single formula or approach that will work with every single teacher around. Choosing the right supervisory approach will depend not only on the teacher’s characteristics such as his expertise or commitment level, but also on the moment the teacher is living inside the school environment. For instance, a teacher may have good skills regarding class control with teenagers, but after being changed to an elementary classroom, his skills may not shine as usual and thus the supervisor can be of help for guidance.
According to Glickman, Gordon and Ross-Gordon (2009) the role a particular supervisor in an educational environment can be chosen among a directive, collaborative or nondirective approach. After observing a teacher in his or her work, the level of counseling a supervisor decides to apply will range from mere informing about facts to pointing out action plans to be taken by the teacher. In addition, a supervisor may decide to just discuss working issues with a teacher without necessary previous observation. Putting aside the applied approach, the goal is to drive teachers to a role of independent instructional development.
This assessment is related to the ability to understand the current situation. If a supervisor needs to promote changes in the teachers, first he or she must fully be aware on what is happening around.
But before starting to analyze, a goal must be established. For example: applying a new rubric system for evaluating certain skills in students, boosting peer aide among teachers, increasing attendance in staff meetings. Once the goal is defined, to have an idea on how to accomplish it, the need is assessed by using a range of tools. Glickman et al. (2009) suggest some tools: talking with the staff, observing classes, analyzing records, applying surveys, discussing priorities, among others. The supervisor must choose all the tools in the arsenal to help gather as much valuable information as possible.
Once the findings have been collected, the idea is to organize them for improved understanding of the situation. Diagrams, graphs, flowcharts, are some examples on how layout things to grasp the big picture. This is for the supervisor to order the facts found and also determining the causes behind the findings. Sticking to these findings and avoiding bias and subjectivity to stubbornly force a scenario is a must.
Planning Skills
Once the assessment is completed, it is time for the supervisor to design a road map that will get the school community to the objective. This is mainly done by deciding the actions to take and defining the resources needed to complete them.
Again, organizing skills are a priority and the use of the right tools will help achieve proper planning. Glickman et al. (2009) show that for instance, if many of the assessed needs can be categorized, affinity diagrams may be a wise choice. If there are several aspects that will be affected by the course of action and the supervisor needs to keep a good track of the domino effect of the activities, he or she can use impact analysis charts. If the supervisor is familiar with basic project management and wishes to have a timeline on activities, a Gantt chart can do the job.
Furthermore, there are other tools that can help the supervisor carry out the planning phase at the same time of the assessment, such as force field analysis, PSDA cycle and strategic planning. A supervisor, having all these tools at hand, must be able to determine which one or ones to use, based on the needs and the level of detail for both planning all that must be carried out and being able to follow up the activities as they are performed. Lastly, supervisors must understand that while sticking to a plan is a generally a good idea for reaching the goal, not everything can be considered as carved in stone. The changing nature of certain environments and the appearance of uncalculated risks, may force the supervisor in its leader role to make changes and adapt to these situations.
Observing Skills
Effectively collecting data on what is happening in a classroom is a major point for a teacher supervisor. It can work for either assessing and further analyze the current situation or evaluating a before-and-after scenario where changes have been applied. But for observations to be effective, the supervisor must be clear on what exactly to observe.
There is a lot happening during a class session from both the teacher’s and the students’ side: lecturing, feedback, class participation, class control, student-to-student communication, etc. So a supervisor must first decide what elements to prioritize in an observation, since it is impossible to capture and document everything that is happening. Once it has been decided what to track, then a proper observation instrument can be selected: quantitative or qualitative instruments.
Following the definitions proposed by Glickman et al. (2009), quantitative instruments are better suited for registering the frequency in which events happen in the classroom, or if they happen at all or not. These events can vary and a supervisor must chose beforehand which ones to notice. As for the qualitative ones, they tend to have a more narrative nature, and they describe specific events in more detail.
Depending on what the supervisor decides to observe and document during a class observation, a proper format must be made so that the information is accurately collected. More importantly, a supervisor must only document the facts of what is happening and avoid any kind of interpretation of the phenomena being registered. In the end, observations are meant to register what is happening in order to improve teacher performance, thus interpretation should be left for a future discussion with the teacher and focused on a teacher reflection perspective, rather than a one-side scolding session.
References
Glickman, C., Gordon, S., & Ross-Gordon, J. (2009). SuperVision and instructional leadership: A developmental approach (8th ed.). Massachusetts: Pearson.
