When you hear the word leadership, what associations do you make? What is leadership? What is leadership not? This past year, I had the opportunity to participate in a Learning Lab hosted by Education Reimagined. Facilitated by Allan Cohen, the group of dozens of educators from around the country arrived at the following artifact distinguishing leadership: Leadership is […]

Several years ago, my colleague, Lynn Fuini-Hetten, and I started our own inquiry into learner-centered leadership as we got more engaged with the learner-centered education community. Education Reimagined worked with us to connect us to many learning environments around the country to interview leaders and learners in varying learner-centered models. Over the past year, Lynn […]

My colleague, Lynn Fuini-Hetten, and I have been hosting a podcast on education and educational leadership for 6 seasons––TLTalkRadio! For this post, I thought it would be fun to recap some of the most interesting conversations from 2019. It was challenging keeping it to a dozen, but here are some of the stand-out conversation. Enjoy! […]

Five years ago, I wrote a post titled VUCA and Educational Leadership. As a quick recap, VUCA describes the challenging environment we live and work in (probably more applicable now than previously!): Volatility – We live in a world of rapid change driven by an overwhelming volume of information. Uncertainty – Our environments are characterized by our […]

Nearly all states, including my state of PA, have been placing an emphasis on “college and career readiness.” On the surface, and based on the changing times, this seems like a fine idea, but are we falling short? A few sets of questions to ponder: Are we in the wrong paradigm? Our public schools are […]

Many in education follow the work of Brene Brown––showing up with vulnerability and the accompanying courage. She often cites a quote from Theodore Roosevelt, from his speech titled Citizen in a Republic: It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds […]

Have you ever been in a situation where you thought, “If I only had the power, I’d just make [insert task, idea, initiative, etc.] happen.” Or if you already have positional power, how much of your leadership consists of directing others––telling them what to do? Our natural inclination as humans is to want to win […]

Management typically has clearly defined processes to follow. There’s usually little variation in the path to resolve an issue and arrive at a solution. I often refer to this as checklist leadership––what have we always done?; just do it following the previously defined map. Making sure attendance calls go out for students that were late. […]

You’ve probably experienced flow at some point––the state of mind where you are completely immersed in an activity, losing sight of anything outside of your work. In The Rise of Superman: Decoding the Science of Ultimate Human Performance, author Steven Kotler writes, If you’ve ever lost an afternoon to a great conversation or gotten so […]

As an educator, why do you do what you do? How would you answer the question, What’s your personal “why?” It may not be an easy question for everyone to answer. Here’s what I wrote down a few weeks ago: Every individual has a unique gift or set of gifts to bring to the world. As educators, we […]