Good Change Leadership Advice Via Mike Myatt
July 10, 2012I am preparing for two conferences in the fall that deal with leadership and change management as we recognize the importance of developing our innovation practices at school. In putting together a list of references, readings, and active learning opportunities for these conferences, I was happy to read a great piece by Mike Myatt today…
Libya, Russia: Catching Up to the World
July 9, 2012Over the weekend, Libya held the first quasi-democratic elections in 50 years with a relatively low level of violence. Non-Islamist parties appear to have at least somewhat of an attraction to voters. In Tunisia and Egypt, similar election cycles have been held within 18 months of revolutions that started with popular uprisings in the streets. …
One Step to More Effective Teaching
July 7, 2012Teachers: you hold the secrets. You are an enormous neural network of experience about how we learn; all we have to do is access that knowledge and answers leap out at us. If the answers sound complicated, reduce them to their simplest terms. Andrea Kuszewski, writing in Creativity Post, reports on a series of studies…
Destroy, Then Create
July 6, 2012I am creating an active learning workshop for educational business leaders in the fall and found myself falling into a common trap that can kill innovative practices before they have a chance to sprout: creating before destroying. That sounds harsh, but wait a moment. How often have you and your colleagues said something like “we…
Dive In or Lose Another Year?
July 5, 2012Dive in. It’s the 5th of July, tipping point of the summer for many U.S. schools, starting that long slide towards the start of the new school year just 6-7 weeks away. Schools live in this strange quantum of 10-12 month cycles; if we don’t plan and do something one school year it almost always…
Real Leadership Connectivity in Schools
July 2, 2012How many great jazz musicians create their masterpieces working alone, meeting with other members of the group once or twice a month to see how their own riffs merge with those of their collaborators? None. Many of use have been talking and writing about breaking down silos in schools. Modeling this change in how we…
The Missing P
June 30, 2012I just realized we have been missing a “P”. For years we have referred to the three key organizational elements at our school as the Three P’s: people, program, and place. I imagine many others see their school in these same terms, as well as folks in other organizations. They reflect the main characteristics of…
Phillips on Five Key Innovation Factors
June 29, 2012Innovation is a word that we all now use: “schools must innovate in order to meet the demands of a rapidly changing world”. But before we start something, we should know WHY. Jeffery Phillips, writing on the Innovation Excellence blog site notes five key factors that are driving that need to innovate; my commentary is…
Two Simple Keys to Solving Complex Problems
June 28, 2012There are two kinds of people in the world and they solve problems very differently. Some people look forward to solve the problem; others look backward to understand the problem. Both have a role to play, but for darn sure we should know not only our own natural approach, but also that of others on…
Pacific Ridge: Young School Doing a Lot of the Right Things
June 28, 2012I had a great meeting yesterday with Bob Ogle, Head at the young Pacific Ridge School in north San Diego County. Eight yeas ago this school was an idea; five years ago it was a collection of portable buildings on a hillside; today it is fully-enrolled, grades 7-12, with an impressive array of intelligently designed…
Four Reads For End of June
June 27, 2012I am catching up on my blog reading after taking all of about three days off. If anyone ever questions the pace at which our knowledge base is increasing, take a few days off of reading the outputs of thoughtful educators; we are always behind no matter what we do to keep up! Bennett, Kern,…
How to Overcome Just Being Good
June 27, 2012I have been thinking and writing a lot about the need to introduce the discussion of value proposition into how we think strategically about our schools. The consideration of institutional value is quite different than the consideration of strategic goals as practiced by most schools. Importantly, value directs us outward to the view of our…
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