I don’t know about you, but when I see kids having a blast in school while they are participating in well-designed learning experiences…I get fired up! Recently, I got fired up over something I saw and came up with these three principles of learner-centered leadership. 1. Kids are more than numbers. Our world today attempts to quantify everything. Because algorithms play such…
When our kids were young, we took them to the Outer Banks In North Carolina for beach vacations. I can still remember Anna as a 1-year-old rolling around in the sand looking like a sugar cookie! We rented a house on the beach that had a sand dune between the house and the ocean. Since we rented the same place…
We all love to have problems facing us all day at work, right? Well, if you do not agree with this statement, let’s look at the value of problems through the lens that Dan Rockwell suggests. You see, problems can be used to help move your organization to become better, as well as help with your own interpersonal growth.So let’s…
I worked with Dr. Coiner when I was the superintendent at Penn-Trafford School District. Dr. Coiner was an excellent learner-centered leader then (10 years ago) and is an even better leader now! This week I was catching up with Dr. Coiner and I asked her what advice would she give a new principal who was just starting their job. Her answer…
I was thinking of statistics the other day. Here is something that I find interesting. The chance of a student being shot to death in the United States in a school shooting is 1-614,000,000 (based on data from 2018). For context, the chance of winning the Powerball lottery is 1-292,000,000 And yet…We spend millions of dollars on school resource officers…Because…
When I was a teacher, a group of my teacher friends and I organized 2 field trips a year for our 7th and 8th graders. Every Fall we would take a day trip to New York City. In the Spring we would rotate destinations between Washington DC, Baltimore, and Boston. We raised money for the trips and it was a…
I have a weekly newsletter called “The Learner-Centered Leader.” The newsletter is published every Monday morning at 7:00AM and shares leadership advice and inspiration for learner-centered leaders. You can subscribe to the newsletter here. This blog post is an example of the content in the newsletter. “Too often, leaders attempt to change how their teams and organizations act without changing…
 l   “Remember, the act of schooling is an inherently political act.” –Dr. Bill Boyd   Let’s be honest; politics makes us uncomfortable at times. After all, we just want to make decisions for the kids’ best interest and move on to the next thing. The rub occurs when there are competing visions of what is in…
Here is something to think about. In all of my experience and all of my reading on leadership, 1 characteristic stands out for leaders who get things done. Want to know what it is? It’s is simple to understand, but difficult to implement. Great leaders adapt strategy to meet the specific context of their situation. Go be awesome!
​Do you have a book in your life that you continually go back to and read again and again? The books that can continually draw you back are important. These books are important because the concepts, stories, or insights gained from reading the book are continuously relevant for your life. Books that stay relevant are “evergreen” books…books that (like the…