Reflective Paper about XYZ Trust.

REFLECTIVE PAPER
After going through the current studies, my understanding and perception about leadership changed as I had perceived leadership a fixed position but the literature based evidences and classroom interactions were too dominant and convincing to accommodate (Illeris, 2003) new learning which came as leadership a set of functions and leadership as a concept (Leithwood & Steinbach, 2000) rather than a formal role (Leithwood, 2004; Lieberman, 1988). Based on this understanding this reflective paper focuses on how a trust team views its role as a leader. I will try to critically examine and analyze the practices of a trust, based on two visits to explore the leadership and its pedagogy. However, I feel that two visits were insufficient to have a deeper understanding of the topic which is of-course a huge area to discuss. This paper will outline the background information, state of the existing leadership model and practices and lastly will try to put forward some recommendations.
The trust was a result of an inspiration of a worst situation observed by a renowned singer of Pakistan, when he observed some children in a far-flung area of Sindh, Pakistan who were constrained to drinking contaminated water from a well where birds and animals were lying dead. This situation was a though provoking event for him. Hence, he, with the support of his friends and fans, launched XYZ trust, with the aim to provide basic needs for the children, specifically with the vision that trust will be a leader in providing opportunities to a better life through education to the underprivileged working children of Pakistan. However, the focus has now been expanded towards the ‘children in public schools’ besides ‘underprivileged working children’. Under this trust, currently there are 34 schools operational in Karachi, Rawalpindi and Lahore where almost 2155 working children are getting educational benefits, while 148 teachers are employed. One government schools is also handed over by government to the trust while negotiations for others are in process.
Of-course, it seems a noble cause, and at the other hand there is a harsh reality that currently there are 8 Million Child Labors in Pakistan (Chaudhry, 1999) caused by constant poverty which forces the parents to send their children to work for an additional income. The childhood rights to get education, the chance to play and opportunities for the normal physical development are basic human rights, denied to these 8 million children. Perhaps, now in Pakistan, we are so used to child labors that we don’t even notice it. I reflect on my own behavior that when this task was given, I explored different materials on child laboring and started taking notice of child labors around me, else, I never critically thought about. (Absolutely, it is my new learning). It could be probably the cultural context and mind-set of every common person in Pakistan.
With above worst situation of child labouringly in Pakistan, will the trust be able to accommodate and achieve its goals and vision? Of-course not, but the trust has taken initiatives to fill the gap being within its capacity and limitations, not to facilitate all these 8 millions children but to contribute its share with the slogan that, ‘no differences can only make the difference’. This can be through provoking message to every one of us.
XYZ Trust mainly endeavors to facilitate non-formal primary education to the underprivileged working children of Pakistan to make them better citizens for a brighter future. It has introduced a new notion of education as ‘Education as Labor’, because it also extends financial support to these deserving working children by providing a fixed stipend of Rs 10/- daily in exchange for the time they take out from their every day jobs to attend schools. Through this initiative XYZ Trust is trying to make a difference in the society. The education imparted to these children would help them to take on board with the mainstream society and become useful citizen of Pakistan.
Initially I was exactly not aware of the structure of this trust and its leadership style, and I had thought of sampling one of its trust members to explore his/her pedagogy of leadership. But after going through the whole system of the trust and its schools network, I opted the whole XYZ Trust officials as leadership for the schools whom I found occupying various roles in the school and leadership was not static. They were providing direction and exert influence in order to achieve the school’s goals (Leithwood, 2004).
The leadership style, which I perceived was purely based on the given criteria and tasks proposed by Sergiovanni (1998) as the trust is striving hard for capital development through focusing their ministerial roles seriously and embodying it by emphasizing the practices purposing, maintaining harmony, institutionalizing values, motivating, problem solving, managing, explaining, enabling, modeling and supervising. I found the evidences of every task in Trust leadership and in their controlled schools with compassion that the organization, its employees and other stakeholders believe in concern and sympathy for the underprivileged, especially the working children. I observed that every individual to whom I met showed a culture of collaboration in trust as well as in schools, which reminded me of a live example of learning community (Lovely & Buffum, 2007) because to create a learning community the major components like respect, caring, inclusiveness, trust, empowerment and commitment (Retallick, Cocklin, & Coombe, 1999) are the essential ingredients and all these were very evidently present.
The second major characteristics of the institutions was the distributed leadership (Gronn, 2003) which starts from willingness to share authority, the capacity to facilitate the work of staff, and the ability to participate without dominating, this was very much evident through out the institution, as every body seemed independent to work toward the achievement of their goals.
The students brought to school are not the normal school students, but they use to come from the background of working class children, and they use to have problematic behaviors. I found the leadership of school emphasizing on character building, as they consider character building to be an integral aspect of their programs, as learning without personal integrity will be of little value to the individual and the society.
I also found that the trust in terms of cultivation, courage, creativity, commitment, and communication is very much consistent, with a culture of high expectations as in the beginning of this paper I have already given the statistics of child labor in Pakistan, but the trust is still striving hard to impart quality education to these underprivileged children and gradually approaching toward its goal. Likewise they have the creativity to create solutions to the potential barriers like the problems in terms of dealing with government schools as they faced some resistance from parents and teaching staff. Trust created a good link and partnership with government to overcome the issue as they believe that without mutual cooperation and support by the government, programs can not get the success. Another problem was adopting the proscribed syllabus in its schools, so with collaboration of a prestigious institution the existing syllabus was maneuvered to meet the needs of the students, so that students could be able to get the most relevant and authentic information through the usage of AV aids in their teaching, which also shows their commitment to look for the best practices.
Trust leadership explained that quality education is every citizen’s right and its responsibility lies with the state. Now, a paradigm shift is required in the mindset of state authorities, the people and the education system to save our future generations from destruction. As a first step towards accomplishment of its vision, Trust had initially started educational facilitation for the underprivileged working children of Pakistan, but now they have expanded their service scope from these children to other children studying in government schools through public-private partnership to maximize the mass coverage. Trust believes there is not a single decent public school in Pakistan, so what future do these children studying in public schools have if they study 61-year-old textbooks in a rapidly progressing world? Trust believes that a student must learn from the textbook how to learn, change and inquire freely rather than becoming a “lakeer ka faqeer”. If we want our future generations to ask the right questions then a culture of discussion, interaction, proactive thinking and asking questions needs to be encouraged, then we have to update our curriculum according to the needs of time. To address these needs, Trust has created its own syllabus up to class 5th, which has already been mentioned above.
Likewise according to the Trust, a ‘public school’ is nothing more than a room, chalkboard and a teacher, which can be termed as ‘something is better than nothing’ but Trust emphases that this term should never be used when it comes to health and education. They justify it by saying that a ‘reason to believe’ sets the ball rolling slowly, but in the right direction. It is not strange when extraordinary people do extraordinary things. But when they have a ‘reason to believe’, even ordinary people start doing extraordinary things.
Conclusion and Recommendation
I have been privileged to work with many dynamic, adaptive and creative colleagues who represent the essential qualities of effective leadership. Yes; the group members, I really appreciate their kindness, generosity and knowledge sharing attitude though which I got many new ideas and learning. Concluding this reflective paper, I am confident to say that the school is on the track to transform the school to a LC. A slight supportive and collaborative atmosphere is needed for further progress by the Principal. DL extends authority and influence to groups and some further downed distribution of responsibilities can flourish school further. On going professional development is always the assurance of success that needs to be initiated, while taking appropriate measure to retain the trained staff.
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