EDLD 5399 Week Four, Part One

There a variety of characteristics that an effective leader must possess. I am a firm believer that reflections play a vital role in developing a confident leader. Reflections mean that you have had an opportunity to share an experience. Experiences help shape your knowledge and understanding on either new information or prior knowledge of a shared experience. At the beginning of my intern experience, I complete an assessment of myself with the competencies for the superintendent test. There were three options, I could put an (I) meaning I want to improve, (c) competent, and (s) strength and strong enough to teach someone it. Most of my answers for each competency were either I or C. To me, this makes sense, however as I went through the program and we had to take the same assessment, my answers changed to mostly (S) with a few (C).


The Lamar Superintendent program has exposed me to blogs. I really had no idea of what a blog was and definitely the purpose of it. Now, through consistent use of my blog for each course, I am comfortable with it and have been able to share my experiences with my cohorts and friends that follow my blog. It was great to receive comments from cohort friends and many gave me affirmations about my experiences that they read on my blog.

One course assignment that I really enjoyed was from EDLD 5342 assignment. As a high school principal, I understand Weighted Average Daily Attendance but this assignment exposed me to see how it works when you compare two schools. The comparison allowed me to analyze the two different districts and show how special populations affect WADA. This is an experience that has strengthened me in the finance world.

I have also had the opportunity through my intern plan activity to attend all board meetings. These meetings have been interesting, as our district did not cut any programs last year but decided to do so this year. I felt our superintendent and board of trustees has done a good job of expressing that this was a difficult task that had to have been done. It gave me the opportunity to see how the superintendent work with the board and actually go through the challenging process that would affect the district and community. There was an explanation from each board member and superintendent expressing how challenging it was to make the decision to cut certain programs but that they had to because the district could not afford to take a 1.8 million deficit each year. Although I was not a part of the decision process, I felt like I gained so much from just sitting in the board room and watching the process.

I have enjoyed the wonderful experiences shared throughout this Lamar Superintendent program. Reflections have developed me into a strong candidate to move from a high school principal to central administration in the future. I am very thankful and wish all of my cohorts the very best as we are all well prepared to move into an assistant superintendent and superintendent position.