Professional learning that increases educator effectiveness and results for all students requires skillful leaders who develop capacity, advocate, and create support systems for professional learning.
Episodes: Leadership
- Be the Change You Seek in our Schools: A Dialogue with Dennis Sparks (Sticky Standards #34)
- Be a Learning Partner: A Dialogue with Marceta Reilly (Sticky Standards #33)
- Tag…You’re it!! Teacher Leaders! A Dialogue with Bruce Wellman (Sticky Standards #32)
- It is about GROWTH not GOTCHA! Designing Schools for Meaningful Professional Learning: A Dialogue with Janice Bradley (Sticky Standards #31)
- One Size Does Not Fit All: A Conversation with Pat Roy (Sticky Standards #30)
- The Teacher is a Learner! A Conversation with Nancy Bolz (Sticky Standards #29)
- Principals Bring the Standards TO LIFE in a Building! A Conversation with Frederick Brown (Sticky Standards #28)
- How do we Build GROUPS OF THINKERS? Connecting Educator Evaluation Systems and Professional Learning: A Conversation with Toni Prickett (Sticky Standards #25)
- Learning Communities: What Do our Students Want (Need) Us to Learn? A Conversation with Steve Barkley (Sticky Standards #24)
- Standards Assessment Inventory 2 (SAI2): A Conversation with Steve Preston (Sticky Standards #22)
- Leadership Matters: A Conversation with Tamara Konrade (Sticky Standards #21)
- Professional Learning in Action: A Conversation with John Heim (Sticky Standards #20)
- Transforming Professional Learning with Leaders From Learning Forward! (Sticky Standards #19)
- Leadership: A Conversation with Mike Berblinger (Sticky Standards #14)
- Leadership: Overview (Sticky Standards #4)
THREE BIG IDEAS
Leadership
- develop capacity for learning and leading
- advocate for professional learning
- create support systems for professional learnin
Kenneth Leithwood
Leadership is second only to classroom instruction among all school-related factors that contribute to what students learn at school.
Great Leaders build trust and collaboration while focusing on developing people’s capacities rather than focusing on their limitations.
DuFour/Marzano
Creating a PLC will always require a collective effort, but the fate of that effort will depend to a large extent on the leadership capabilities of the principal.
Roland Barth
The nature of the relationships of the ADULTS in the building has more to do with the success of STUDENTS in that building than any other factor.
Rosabeth Moss Kantor
Leaders are more powerful role models when they learn than when they teach.
Napoleon Bonaparte
A leader is a dealer in hope.
Ralph Nader
I start with the premise that the function of leadership is to produce more leaders, not more followers.
Peter Block
Leadership is the process of translating intentions into reality.
General Colin Powell
A city/state has nothing more important than to educate our children. The Global Leadership Summit 8/8/2013.
Margaret Wheatley
Marshaling, focusing, and developing energy, information, and relationships becomes the role of leaders.
DuFour and Marzano
The district’s role in supporting the PLC process – effective district leaders….
•Both direct and empower
•Create a common language
•Monitor the process in each school as they develop the capacity of principals to lead the process
•Limit initiatives
•Communicate priorities effectively
The principal’s role in leading a PLC
•Change agent
•The collaborative team as a catalyst for shared leadership
•Capacity builders
•Acknowledging the Challenge: Difficult, but Doable!!
Leaders of Learning create a collaborative culture
•Organize staff into meaningful teams
•Provide teams with time to collaborate
•Provide supportive structures that help groups become teams
•Clarify the WORK teams must accomplish
•Monitor the work of teams and provide direction and support
•Avoid shortcuts in the collaborative team process
•CELEBRATE short-term wins and confront those who do not contribute to their teams
Hord and Sommers
Explore, Enlighten, Engage ~ Final Message:
Courage – What will you go to the wall for? What will it take to make LEARNING the number one priority in your school?
Commitment – Does your walk match your talk?
Collegiality – Is there mutual support and respect?
Knowing/Doing Gap – If you always do what you did, you always get what you got.
Reflection – If we can’t figure out a way to reflect on our practice, we won’t make substantive progress.
Trust – It will pay huge dividends.
Unknown
The impossible just takes a little longer.
What question, when asked, might move us forward?
Leadership is more than a job title – it’s a state of mind.
What am I doing to CELEBRATE my learning?