Educational Leadership amidst Covid 19: Challenges and Opportunities of Leadership in the midst of a Pandemic

Estrelita A. Manalang

Education is one of the sectors in our country today that is greatly affected by the Corona Virus Pandemic. With the global pandemic putting everyone’s health and lives on the line, the Department of Education (DepEd) was faced with the dilemma of upholding its role in delivering quality education for every Filipino while protecting them from the deadly virus. Students, teachers, and school leaders are adjusting and coping to the distance learning education.

Now more than ever, educational leaders are called to respond to the current crisis. Significant changes must be made in the way leaders of both public and private institutions collaborate and coordinate with parents, teachers, and other stakeholders. We are called to explore the challenges that the head teachers and master teachers of the secondary schools in Angeles City are facing. In this challenging times, it is a crucial task to investigate the effectiveness of school administrators and leaders in guiding their organizations and promoting their cause.

There is also a greater need for educational institutions to strengthen the curriculum as well as their leadership practices. A new chapter is being written about school leadership in disruptive times that will possibly overtake and overshadow many of their practices before. In a different time and context, school leadership operated within known parameters, but with COVID19 everything has changed. A new leadership order has emerged with no preparations, no standards, no bench-marks, no precedents, no blueprint.

Leadership Starts with Me.

Someone said that if you treat people as if they were what they ought to be, you will help them become what they are capable of becoming. I believe that my role as an MT is not only to guide my colleagues in their teaching in this modality. More importantly, my role is to make them realize that no matter our shortcomings, someone in their team believes in them and knows that it is never too late to improve.

No one is exempted from being the best. New teachers, seasoned ones, millennials, or boomers --everyone is capable of improving. If something is difficult, I should learn it, master it. Then I can confidently become the light that guides my team. Being the light means ACTION. It builds credibility. If they see me do it first, and they witness that it’s good. Who wouldn’t follow? How can one stay credible and effective? God’s grace, positivity, and effective communication-- with or without a pandemic--I’m thankful for these every day.

During this crisis, school leaders cannot emulate the leadership practices they witnessed and enjoyed in the period of stability and calm, but teachers will emerge with unshakable hope, determination, and positivity.

The author is Master Teacher

--oOo-

I at Angeles City National Trade School