Leaders Lists – Reflecting on the new year

This week I found several posts by educators (who are leaders) about things they want to do or remember this year. They are abbreviated below. Abbreviated because it feels important for you to go and read the blogs to see the passion these education leaders bring to their work.

Tony Sinanis’ recent blog about what he wants his teachers to know and want he wants to ensure this year. I’ve abbreviated his list below and you’ll want to read his blog for the details.

1. Supported and empowered
2. Risk taking
3. Idea sharing
4. Multiple ways
5. Heard
6. “Set the stage”
7. Learn
8. Teachers lead daily

Starr Sackstein (NBCT) recently shared 5 Tips for Successful Teacher Leadership. When abbreviated they look like this:

1. Observe
2. Speak up
3. Example
4. Judgment/criticism
5. Available

Check out her blog for the details

Steve Guditus shares 8 “reminders” about leadership he gained from reflections inspired by his PLN (personal learning network). The abbreviated version is:

1. Present
2. Visible
3. Listen
4. Vulnerable
5. Model
6. Time
7. Relationships
8. Differentiate

You might want to read his blog for the details.

Come back and talk about what among these 21 things are a priority for you this year.

A Focus on Leadership

While written from a business perspective, Jim Belosic offers 5 intriguing ideas about flat management. True, he has a small company (14) and yet his comments about management-level people having the opportunity to keep putting their skills to use made me think. So, too, did his comments about flat management as an employee screening tool and what implications those ideas might have in a school or district.

This thought-provoking blog by George Couros shares and connects to ideas from George Siemens. These connections include: mass collaboration and social networks; individual connection (which made me think of 1) Joe Girard’s Law of 250 – scroll down to #2, and 2) synchronicity); and how to create the spaces for these to occur.

I have been on Twitter for years and yet have few tweets. Learning curve and time are probably a big part of that equation. When I led a session one time on Web 2.0 tools, one of the topics that came up was how principals might use Twitter to engage their stakeholders and community. This blog by Alyssa Morones shares great examples of school and district leadership reaching out to their communities via Twitter.

Kyle Pace, in his blog Why do we follow? 5 Important Leadership Traits, talks about 4 traits I believe translate well to online learning and professional networking. Consider trusting, valuing, encouraging risk-taking and growth. How can we translate these to our PLNs (personal learning networks)?

The Partnership for Los Angeles Schools is making progress. This commentary is about both the leadership and humility necessary for turnaround work to succeed. They highlight 4 strategies they have focused on for turning around their schools: leadership, effective teaching, target student supports and family and community engagement. What are they doing that is working well?

Sites, VARC, Finland and The Heart of Leadership

For a team project this year, I started a list of blogs and social media sites. Feel free to add to both of these GoogleDocs with great places you have found to learn, gather and share.

Great portrayal of the challenge of determining what impacts student achievement – do we ever do one thing in isolation?

The concept of Value-Added is not new to education. We hear the term a lot these days in connection with teacher evaluation. This visual (~10 minutes) from VARC is a nice explanation of the concept.

The Finland phenomenon – Finland is often mentioned as an exemplar in educational systems (not to mention scores on international assessments). Recently there have been several pieces in the news. The Daily Riff actually curates stories about Finland’s educational system. There is a good documentary on YouTube – The Finland Phenomenon (4 parts). Larry Ferlazzo’s blog has a post on “best resources” for learning about Finland’s educational system. At Boston’s 90.9 NPR station you’ll hear a piece (~45 min) on lessons from both Finland and South Korea. Each country has different philosophies and practices.

The title of this post says it all – The heart of leadership – Having had a daughter who sang the Star Spangled Banner at high school sporting events, I have watched the stumble and heard the pitch change. Never have I seen a coach step towards her at that moment. As Diego Rodriguez says, “At the heart of leadership is a deceptively simple question: “Am I willing to risk my personal reputation, status, and safety for the good of others?” Fortunately, I work with leaders who are.

Leadership survey and more…

• Take the TEDEd website tour. Every month the number of videos and flipped classroom episodes increases. Topics include: the arts, business and economics, health, literature, mathematics, social studies, thinking and learning and more.
• The controversy continues over the use of video games in education, and guess what? Not all teachers are sold on the benefits of video games as learning tools.
• “PowerPoint on steroids” allows a teacher to create presentations on their iPad, share them with students on their iPads, build in polls/quizzes, collect the data and engage students in a different way.
• From the University of Kent – take this 50-question survey about your leadership style. The results include: authoritarian, procedural, transformational, participative and Laissez-faire. I’d be curious to learn where you fall.
• I’m taking an online course right now and we were talking about building trust online. You might like to check out our thoughts on that topic here.