Journal Article Review #2: The School As a Social System

Portfolio Exercise #1: Select a school principal who you believe is an outstanding educational

leader. Interview this leader using the social-systems model described in this leader. More

specifically, craft a series of questions that probe the principal’s leadership by asking about the

principal’s role in these areas:

a. The structure of the school

b. The culture of the school

c. The politics in the school

d. The teaching and learning system

e. The motivation in the school

Profile of the School Head

I. Personal Information:

Name: Julio P. Constantino

Designation: Principal II

Station: Lamesa Elementary School, Santa Cruz, Marinduque

Years in service as SH: 15 years

II. Outstanding Accomplish and Citation

Outstanding Master Teacher (Metro Bank Awardee) during his time as MT

Outstanding Principal I (Division Level)

 Nominee as Outstanding Elementary School Principal I (District Level)

Outstanding Brigada Eskwela Implementer

(Hall of Fame Awardee) Regional and Division Levels

Outstanding Special Education Program Implementer (Division Level)

A. The structure of the school

1. What is the structure of your school?
Being the head of the school is not an easy task. It requires a lot of effort and energy,

hence a school head plays many roles. One of such is the structuring of the school.

Should we be paying more attention on the structure of schools? A lot of facets of

education are coming under scrutiny at the moment, especially these days that the

structure of school affect more and gives merit to improvement of learning outcome.

As for me, the best structure of the school is an open system school, which is one of

the model of social system. In this way, there is an interplay of the influence of the

society, community, politics, history, administrator, teachers, and students. There are

individuals involved that have needs and beliefs, dependent on the level of cognition

to have knowledge, understand tasks, and display the desired behavior.

Just like in the present school I am administering, managing, and supervising, the

internal and external stakeholders have an interactive roles, which are contributing

towards the attainment of the school organization. This is exactly one of the greatest

contributing factor that made the school a Hall of Fame in Brigada Eskwela

Implementation. The BE implementation cannot be done in isolation, it needs the

involvement of the teachers, students, community, and the local government unit and

other NGOs and Alumni Association and the rest of the external stakeholders.
 Moreover, it needs a good harmonious relationship of the school to the community as

their partners in structuring and improving the school.

B. The culture of the school

1. What is the school’s culture? Is it bound by a feeling of belonging (esprit de corps)?

As I understood and practiced for many years, school culture is the way

administrators, teachers, students, and the all the stakeholders of the school work

together and set of beliefs, values, and assumptions they share. It always fosters

positivity in which it promotes student’s ability to learn. Definitely, it is bound by a

feeling of belongingness, in which all the individuals working for the good, benefit,

and improvement of the school are welcome.

On the question that what is my school culture? Well, the best behavior practiced is

trust to each other. I believe that trust between and among individuals in the school is

high effective. Hence, it people trust to each other, it can greatly affect to their day to

day experiences, particularly on the part of the teachers, who are working for a

significant impact on the students’ achievement.

As a principal, I found myself a key factor in setting the culture of my school.

Thus, I worked with excellent in setting and maintaining a positive school culture,

and I worked for other school leaders to benchmark other culture which could be

applicable to my school. Being an instructional leader, I gave my teachers an

opportunity to make school-level decisions so that collaboration and communication

were emphasized. In order words, I trusted my teachers, that is my way to build and
 foster stronger and harmonious relationship by giving them autonomy at their

classroom level.

C. The politics in the school

Politics in school refers to the exercise of power as school head. Here, I practice a

blend of leadership styles such as bureaucratic and transformational leadership styles.

In managing people, I am still the head of the school, thus, the order came from me as

the top management. Teachers are still obliged to abide the rules set for their specific

functions. Hence, the bureaucratic leadership pattern focuses on the administrative

needs an organization has. At the same time, I soften the bureaucratic style, by

applying transformation leadership in which it encourages, inspires, and motivates

employees to innovate and create change that will help them grow and shape the

future success of our school, that is the improvement of learning outcome and higher

performance of the students.

D. The teaching and learning system

4. How do you deal with the improvement of teaching and learning?

The DepEd through the Human Resource Development has program for the continuous

professional growth of teaches such as trainings, seminars, workshop, capability

programs, retooling programs, and others. The school on the other hand, support the

training through its own conduct of Learning Action Cell (LAC) session to continuously
 enhance the teaching competencies of the teachers. In this way, the teacher can more

affect the learning system, eventually, improvement of learning outcome will be achieve.

This is my constant practice in school.

Furthermore, I myself, provide technical assistance and mentorship to my

teachers. This is an advantage for me, since I have been a master teachers for many years

before I passed the principal test. In this way, I was able to give tips for enhancement of

my teaches.

E. The motivation in the school

The school’s strongest motivation is the improvement of learning. As much as possible,

quality education is desired to be given to each child. Although in public schools, only

basic education is given, since, there are some inadequacies of the facilities and

instructional materials for learning, still, it should not affect the quest for quality

education which our school is try to our children. This can only be made possible with the

help of all the stakeholders of the school.

Portfolio Exercise #2: Also ask about school-community relations (environmental opportunities

and constraints) and the perceived effectiveness of the school. Analyze your data and draw some

conclusions about the following:

a. The basic mission of the school

Guided by the mission of the Department of Education, “To protect and promote the right

of every Filipino to quality, equitable, cultured-based, and complete basic education

 where: Students learn in a child-friendly, gender sensitive, safe, and motivating

environment; teachers facilitate learning and constantly nurture every learner;

administrators and staff, as stewards of the institution, ensure an enabling and

supportive environment for effective learning to happen; family, community, and other

stakeholders are actively engaged and share responsibility for developing life-long

learners.

The school is sees to it that every learner must have access to quality, equitable, culture-

based, and complete basic education. Also in the DepEd mission, it focused on the ideal

set up for quality education. The environment from where the learning happens which

much be conducive, child-friendly, gender-sensitive, and safe for the learners.

b. The school’s vision of teaching and learning

The vision of the school is also guided by the DepEd Vision in which the school dreams

of producing students who have love for their country and skilled enough to contribute to

their country’s progress. As teachers, the students dream of students who are competent

and prepared enough to face everyday life. The school vision that all students are skilled

with the right values and competencies that they can use as they go on with their day to

day lives. Also, our vision centers on the teaching and learning, thus, teaching-learning

must be learner-centered, that is, teachers must only facilitate the learning. It requires

active engagement or participation of the learners while doing or delivering the lesson.

Moreover, teaching and learning must not only a one-man show. It is not only the teacher

who will do the talking and sharing, but there must be also student involvement.
c. The leadership of the principal

As the old adage says, “One size does not fit all.” This means that one leadership

style is not applicable to all kinds of situations dealt in school. Thus, as a school

principal, I usually employ a blend or a mixture of different leadership styles such as

bureaucratic, transformational, and situational leadership styles.

Since we follow orders from DepEd authorities through memorandum and orders, in

school-based, teaches also follow. They also follow sets of rules made by the Department

and those made in the school-based. This is good since this fosters disciplined and order

among subordinates who are highly professional in their jobs.

Also, transformational since subordinates are well-motivated to advance in their

career for their own growth. They are encouraged to go out of their shell and create

something new and different which can greatly contribute to them as professionals and to

their professions as teaches.

Situational, since schools encounters different problems. As another adage says,

“different folks have different stokes” which means the right and the appropriate

leadership style will be applied to the needs of the situation.

d. The community’s role in the school

School cannot achieve success in isolation. It needs the involvement, participation,

and help of the community. On the other hand, community has a role play in school. The
community is a partner of the school towards its nurturing and teaching children in a child-

friend environment.

The school and the community should work together to promote the health, well-

being, and learning of all students. When schools actively involve and engage community,

resources are able to respond more effectively to the health-related needs of students.

The community involvements foster partnerships among schools, family and

community groups, and individuals. These partnerships result in sharing and maximizing

resources. And they help children and youth develop healthy behaviors and promote healthy

families.

Analysis:

Based on the answers of the school principal interviewed, the school has the

following strengths which is a result of the kind of leadership that the school head

implemented between and among the stakeholders of the school. These are open-system

structure of the school, the trust between and among individuals in school, the high

advocacy towards child-centered teaching and learning, and the leadership styles that the

school imposed in school.

Having an open system structure of school welcomes all the stakeholders of the

school. This is also gives them an opportunity to work with ease and trust to one another.

It fosters good culture which is harmonious in which there is no conflict or point of

argument hence, everyone is trusted and entrusted to his or her respective job. Also

teachers are given the freedom or authority in decision making for their classroom. This

is very important because the teachers felt the trust of the school head. Of course, this is

given since the trust has been established already among teachers. In this way, the school
head knew very well the capability, capacity, and character of the teacher to manage and

decide for her own class. The teachers possess instructional competence and instructional

leadership, thus, full and complete trust have been given to decide for the class. Also they

were involved in some school decisions with regard to the teaching and learning

situation, their suggestions, feedback, and recommendations are important to hear hence,

they are the ones who have direct contact with the learners.

As the school head says, the strongest motivation of the school is the

improvement of teaching and learning. This is truly the heart of teaching. Seeing children

excelled and achieved in their academics is such an honor and a fulfillment for the

school. Also, this is an indication that the school is constantly doing its best to support the

teaching and learning.

Another strength of the school is the partnership with the community. The

community is also good place for the extension of learning. The parents and the local

government officers in the community play important roles towards school improvement.

This is very true in public schools in which there are established organization to strength

the bond and partnership between and among the stakeholders such as Parent-Teacher

Association, Alumni Association, and others.

The most striking leadership style is the use of situational leadership style. The

school head does not rely on one style, but uses a blend or mixture is which all

employment of leadership styles depend on the case or the need of the situation. Being a

situational leadership is good and an advantage because this style fit to the development

level of the followers that the school head is trying to influence. No wonder, the school

head has been so far so good in his leadership and management of school. One
contributing factors that made him both nominee and awardee as Outstanding School

Principal.

The practice and leadership of the school head is so far so good. The structure,

culture, politics, community partnership, improvement of teaching and learning and the

motivation are all well-managed and organized. Everything seemed aligned to the DepEd

Vision and Mission.