Too often schools buy into “technology” with the expectation that teachers, students and leaders won’t have to change a thing – life can go on – business as usual. Not so fast. Technology is disruptive – not in a negative sense that it causes chaos with everyone and everything out of control; but in a […]
Change, Innovation and Leadership
It’s not often that I find resources that push the limits of our paradigm of school leadership, but Jonathan Martin shares some takeaways from a new book, The Innovator’s DNA, that offer an opportunity to reflect on our own leadership and that of the organizations we call schools. I haven’t read the book yet, but […]
Framework for 21st Century School Leadership
Reading through Google Reader, I encountered a post that really interested me. The post, by Chris Kennedy, proposes a framework for leadership today. I find that many of our current ideas of leadership are rooted almost exclusively in the past. As a result, we have a lot of status quo leaders in our schools. Chris […]
Changing Habits – In Work and Life
Where change is happening, we often hear that if we are wanting to do something differently, the change must involves giving something up, or stopping some unproductive behavior. In Necessary Endings, Dr. Henry Cloud refers to this as pruning. And we all need to do it – at work and in life. “You can’t prune […]
Simple definition of Leadership…
From Beyond Code by Rajesh Setty: “Leadership is not tied to a position. If you want to lead, look for the gaps in your organization and start trying to fill them. Leadership can be as simple as filling in the blanks.” (pg. 5)
How creative are educators?
The last time I blogged, I asked the question – How passionate are educators? It seems like I’m on a bit of a rant about educators, particularly educational leaders with the addition of today’s question – How creative are educators? Michael Hyatt recently suggested 7 Ways Successful Creatives Think Differently Than Unsuccessful Ones. As I […]
How passionate are educators?
This may seem like a cynical post, but I’ve run across several resources the past few days that have me reflecting on my own passion as an educational leader and wondering how passionate we are as a profession. You may have seen Ken Robinson’s first TED talk – Do Schools Kill Creativty? In this talk, […]
Single Best Idea for Reforming K-12 Education
A recent Forbes article of the same title by Steven Denning resonated with me. It emphasized the role of leadership (at all levels), particularly in moving the focus of our actions as leaders away from “the system” and back to the learners. In addition, the current focus on the system does not take into account […]
What’s your frame?
As a school leader, you make an incredible amount of decisions – both instructional and operational – in a day, a week, a month, a school year, and certainly over an entire career. Why do you do what you do? Do you reflect on what values and beliefs are at your core as a school […]
Learn
Not only is this a terrific video about learning in real life, it’s an excellent example of how we communicate about ideas with media in the 21st century. [vimeo http://www.vimeo.com/27244727 w=400&h=225] LEARN from Rick Mereki on Vimeo. On the Vimeo site you’ll also see two other videos, Eat and Move.