Harvard Certificate in School Management and Leadership (CSML)
My thoughts on the Harvard Certificate in School Management and Leadership (CSML).
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My thoughts on the Harvard Certificate in School Management and Leadership (CSML).
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Recently, my school offered to pay for some members of the leadership team (myself included) to take the . This page is just to record my thoughts on it.
The certificate comprises of four courses which can be completed in any order. We decided to start off with the course. I guess because this specific academic year brought with it more changes and their accompanying challenges than you can shake a stick at. The other courses that are available are , and . The courses are $499 a pop and have a very low barrier for entry, so I reckon any teacher who aspires to climb the ladder can attempt this course.
I'll add my thoughts on each module as I complete them, with the first one being Leading Change.
The Leading Change course was an eye opener in so many ways. The case studies were carefully picked out and are relevant to the point of being uncanny. Any of those scenarios can easily apply to any school, regardless of your curriculum, levels, language, cultural differences or even leadership structure.
The module started off with a unit on adaptive and technical challenges. Something that, upon reflecting on it, seems obvious but it is also so easy to get wrong. This was probably the most impactful module, with the most pronounced "Aha" moments for me. Being aware of this one simple difference has made me rethink my approach to problem solving.
The next unit follows up on the previous one with the adaptive leadership framework. It delved a bit deeper into how one could approach adaptive challenges. How to prepare your teachers for adaptive fixes and changes, and how to effectively deal with, and even utilize, conflict.
Unit 3 was all about culture. How to build and maintain a positive, enabling culture and how to guide teachers towards this shared goal. It covers the aspects of school culture and what to look out for. While this was the unit I was most excited about, it was unfortunately also the most underwhelming.
The final module was about equity. This module was set up in an interesting way in that it combined what we learned in the first three units in order to tackle the issue of equity in schools. It made for a good review of the frameworks, tips and tricks we learned up to this point. This unit was the longest of the three (or at least felt like it), and I did not feel as engaged as in the first three units.
Overall, I really enjoyed this module. It was collaborative, insightful and, most importantly, useful. The cherry on the cake was when I received an email stating that we will get actual, signed certificates (not just a digital "well done, print this yourself and hang it on your fridge" certificate).
I will update this page as I finish courses, because, quite frankly, it's pretty good. I'm really learning a lot and there are so many points that I can apply. Some of the topics are those standard "you've probably been doing this already but now there's a name for it" things, but that does not detract from the quality of the course at all.