Taylor Connard

Education 650

Standard Summary

Standard 7: Professional Community for Teachers and Staff

“Effective educational leaders foster a professional community of teachers and other professional

staff to promote each student’s academic success and well-being.” This standard was met by

participating in the following activities.

 Standard Activity 7.32C: For this activity, I interviewed department chairs at Clay

County High School. The two department chairs shared their thoughts on the role as chair

and how it can be improved. Their duties as chair varied, but they agreed that more

communication with administration is important.

Key Learnings from the Experience

From this experience, I learned that department chairs have the potential to ease the

burden of administrators. I also learned that each chair has different duties depending on their

content. I discovered that over the course of the last few years, the role as chair has diminished.

Administrators should rely on their chairs more to ease their jobs.

Area(s) Needing Further Experience and Improvement

I would like to be able to interview and shadow more department heads to see how the

different contents vary even more. I also would like to discuss the department head role with our

current administrators and discuss why the role has diminished over the years.