Industries are being disrupted by people and organizations that are utilizing technology to reframe the traditional business role. Disrupters study an industry in an effort to determine its most essential components. By doing this, disrupters do not approach the problem with a technology in mind. Rather, they concentrate their time on doing the heavy mental lifting required to analyze the…
Tag: Education Leadership
Hope and the New Operating System of Education…4 Questions to Start Your Journey
“No ‘advanced educator’ can allow themselves to be so absorbed in the question of what a child ought to be as to exclude the discovery of what he is.” –Jane Addams A few weeks ago, I wrote a blog about how the dominant operating system of education is broken. Over the next few Tuesday’s I will delve further into that…
4 Steps to Find Innovation in Your Schools
“It’s easier to act your way into a new way of thinking, than think your way into a new way of acting.” Jerry Sternin This blog is meant specifically for teachers, principals and superintendents. I am beseeching all of you heroically engaged in these positions to take 15 minutes from your busy day and do what is suggested in this…
4 Mantras Superintendents Use to Give Themselves Permission to be Pioneers in Education
The duties of a superintendent can easily overwhelm a person. Most superintendents start as teachers working with students every day in their classroom. The progression from the classroom to the boardroom includes many stops along the way. In my case, I became a high school guidance counselor then a high school principal before I accepted my first superintendency. I know…
2 Qualities of a “Virtuous” Education Leader
I have become fascinated with the political philosophy that underpinned the beliefs of our founding fathers. Through my journey of learning, I have discovered that we must move beyond the simple Lockean stereotype that we have pigeon-holed most of our founding fathers. The men that influenced our founding fathers ranged from Locke, Hume, Montesquieu, Smith and many others. It seems…
The Operating System of Education is Broken
The following is an excerpt from a forthcoming book I hope to finish this year. I also recently read a great article that reinforced my thinking on this topic. Please take the time to go to https://goo.gl/CwzLQX and read a perspective on the “achievement gap” that is thought provoking by Dr. Camika Royal. The importance of the underlying “operating system”…
Being Taught not to Know
“It’s not that you white people can’t know certain things, it’s that your taught not to know” –Omaha Indian as told to author Jim Harrison What does it mean to “not to know” something? An egregious example of not knowing is when one willfully decides not to know. For example, a student may turn their head every time one of…
2 Ways Future-Focused Superintendents create Innovation
Future-focused superintendents create habits that lead to their success. Creating a “space” where educators take the time to think about their practice and the implications for their communities is a vital aspect of a future-focused superintendent. If you are not careful, you will find yourself “ping-ponging” from one activity or crisis to another throughout the day. The opposite of this…
Building Possibilities in Public Education
Our education innovation journey involves more than adopting simple slogans or instituting a new “program”. True change for our learners (and their learning) occurs when we think about the “adjacent possible”. I would like to talk today about something I read in Steven Johnson’s book, Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation. The idea is called “the…
5 Leadership Hacks for Rural School Superintendents
Do you sometimes wonder what the “pulse” of your school district is? Have you ever been blindsided by a problem and asked yourself, “How did I miss that?”. Everyone who has been a superintendent in a rural school has asked themselves that question at some point. Incorporate the following leadership hacks into your routine and you will not have to…