Hello all,
I am wondering if any of you out there have made this transition? That is, starting as a teacher, going to admin, and then back to teaching. If so, did you find the admin experience helped you or hurt you afterwards in securing a teaching position? In particular, I am curious about this experience in the international scene.
Thank you very much.
Dredge
Teaching to Admin, then back to teaching
Re: Teaching to Admin, then back to teaching
My husband did this last year. He was a dean of students, then an assistant MS principal in the States, then took 3 years off to build a school in Tanzania, then did 5 years as communications director for a big Asian school. He's now back teaching. We had a couple schools say they were concerned about his time away in that he may not have been up-to-date with technology, etc. (which was a bigger concern than his lack of MYP or IB experience, really) and, although we were at one of the elite schools in Asia, it was pretty clear that we weren't going to slide into a similar school straightaway. We were really open to getting that experience and are now in the ME for a few years before moving up again. We had several offers on the table, so I think it's possible. You have to have a good reason for the transition, and hopefully have stayed up-to-date on curriculum, pedagogy, technology, etc. so you can talk about things that you may not have been actively using while in admin.
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Re: Teaching to Admin, then back to teaching
I personally think it's crap if school's have a problem with the teaching-administration-teaching change, unless you've been out of teaching for maybe 5 years. But that's more for classroom discipline and routines. I think it can be good if teachers have administration experience to understand where they are coming from and what other things are important that are happening in the school. Just as administration needs teaching experience.
Re: Teaching to Admin, then back to teaching
I have done this and am about to do so again. You do not loose those hard-won classroom management skills, in fact you will have improved after reflecting on the pedagogies that you will have promoted to teachers for a few years. Now, after leading a bilingual international school, no classroom teaching involved, I am planning again to take a position which will require me to teach a few classes.
Working with students keeps you grounded, in my opinion. Too long away from them, you forget children are still operating with differently-wired brains from adults. Secondly, it is too easy for an administrative team to sometimes forget the intense pressure assessment and reporting cycles place on teachers: and there is nothing like annotating a stack of 30 essays to remind you.
The best educational leaders are people with a deep knowledge and a practical understanding of pedagogy. Leadership is far more than hounding people with less experience than you to meet deadlines; it is about transforming the way they view the process of learning and managing teams to reflect together and develop strategies so children in their classrooms learn best. The best synergy links the work of the educators in the classroom with the strategic support of a an experienced administrative team.
We all know administrators in very large systems who are now decades away from direct relationships with students, but the most credible administrators are those who can be easily re-imagined relating to students as well as to their professional colleagues.
Working with students keeps you grounded, in my opinion. Too long away from them, you forget children are still operating with differently-wired brains from adults. Secondly, it is too easy for an administrative team to sometimes forget the intense pressure assessment and reporting cycles place on teachers: and there is nothing like annotating a stack of 30 essays to remind you.
The best educational leaders are people with a deep knowledge and a practical understanding of pedagogy. Leadership is far more than hounding people with less experience than you to meet deadlines; it is about transforming the way they view the process of learning and managing teams to reflect together and develop strategies so children in their classrooms learn best. The best synergy links the work of the educators in the classroom with the strategic support of a an experienced administrative team.
We all know administrators in very large systems who are now decades away from direct relationships with students, but the most credible administrators are those who can be easily re-imagined relating to students as well as to their professional colleagues.