Rita

The Davis school provides the students with a degree of liberty of choice that many students are not ready for. Many times students need more structure and guidance to make their decisions. This campus places responsibility on the individual, however, while this is a beneficial approach, there needs to be a point where the administrator as an instructional leader needs to intervene. Furthermore, students need to have concrete and realistic examples of what they can become if they work hard. Obviously students do not believe in the encouraging phrase “you can be all you want to be.”

If Rita were the Principal at Davis School the quality of instruction would be different. The video shows more about the rapport of teacher and student, but the few excerpts of instruction provided are not engaging nor do they promote high levels of learning. We cannot have low academic expectations of students based on their socioeconomic status. With the antecedents we have about Rita we know that she will use her past teacher experience to revamp the ways students are being taught.

 In addition, she will not let students fall so much behind that they don’t graduate. Rita will monitor her students and utilize data to help her make decisions about how better assist students.  She will probably question the teachers about the poor progress of students and their contributions for improvement. Rita will not wait until students’ senior year to set limits and sign student contracts. Rita would probably set higher expectations from the parents and would create an incentive for students to attend school every day.

Rita will most likely embrace the current philosophical approach, but will advance with it making sure students are not falling in the cracks because of the academic demands.