(This is written as a letter to my two college-aged daughters.) (It is also the foundation of my learner-centered leadership beliefs) I apologize to both of you for every well-meaning person who has asked you these two questions: 1. “What are you going to be when you grow up?” 2. “What job are you going to get with that major?”People…
3 Drivers For Transforming Education Systems One of my “go-to” newsletters is The Learn Letter by Eva Keiffenheim. As the name of the newsletter states, she is concerned with studying how people learn. In her latest issue, she shares insights that a group of learning researchers she worked with to help make sense of education. The research team came up with three…
The Iceberg Model Of Systems Change We have all heard of the saying “that’s the tip of the iceberg” at some point in our careers. We usually use the saying to mean that there is a lot more going on with a situation than we can “see” at that moment. This week Jen Anderson shared this image with me. The image distills the importance…
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 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”…
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…
Today’s post is the first installment in an intermittent series entitled “The Visionary Superintendent”. The goal of the series is to highlight practices that any superintendent can undertake to build capacity within their instructional staff and leadership team. The foundational principle is that educators must take control of the narrative of their profession and design local solutions to local problems.…