Improving School Supervisors' Understanding of Personality and Professional Competencies through Participatory Workshops

The reality in the field often shows that the role of supervisors is not optimal, various challenges such as the unbalanced ratio of supervisors and schools, high administrative burden, and the need for in-depth understanding of the latest education policies and practices, hamper the effectiveness of supervisors in carrying out their mentoring and empowerment functions. The main objective of this community service activity in the form of a participatory workshop is to increase the understanding and capacity of school supervisors regarding personality and professional competencies in carrying out their strategic roles. The method of this workshop is a hybrid of online and offline approaches, utilizing the participatory learning and action (PLA) approach, which is a participatory approach based on adult learning. The total number of participants was 25, comprising 12 who participated offline and 13 who participated online. Participants are selected school supervisors from PAUD, SD, SMP, and SMA levels. The implementation took place in November 2024. Offline activities were conducted at SDN Jawa 5, Banjar Regency, South Kalimantan, and online activities utilized virtual media via Google Meet. The results of community service activities through school supervisor workshops include increased personality competence and professional competence among school supervisors who participate in the workshops. This is evidenced by the participants' ability to develop a follow-up plan in the form of a school mentoring design based on a needs analysis and following the flow of stages according to the mentoring guidelines. Overall, it is expected that through this community service activity, there will be an increase in the competence of school supervisors in carrying out their strategic role.