Powerful Leaders Speak and We Need to Listen

So 5 Superintendents spoke and here are key ideas, statements and changes.  Too many take aways to single out today.  There is a fire in my belly!!!

 

Panel of Superintendents

Change through Leadership

·       Hold people to unconditional high regard.

·       Treat everyone with trust and respect and be a family.

·       Be a coach and provide resources

·       Keep my reluctant dragons close to my side

·       Involve as many people as possible even if it takes longer to accomplish something

·       Balance when to lead and when to step out of the way.  Try to empower others!

·       Talk with my heart with passion

·       Relationships are everything

·       Need a supportive governing board, a focus on kids

·       The appropriate level of push and pull

·       Be as assertive as you can get away with

·       Leadership is a form of service, its not about TITLE

·       There is no place as “good enough”

·       Not every child is proficient, so don’t stop

·       There is no such thing as population insignificant – every child is significant

·       Keep the main thing the main thing.  The kid is the main thing. 

·       Be willing to lose your job to do a good job

The above statements are great for all teachers.

Conditions for Sustainability

·       Lead by example

·       Shine the light on the path

·       Need to build capacity

·       Sometimes need to change people

·       Culture of Learning and Success/ Look at the culture of the organization

·       Culture of Change with the ability to withstand change in leadership

·       Distributed Leadership – give away as much power as someone will pick up. Reform needs to be owned by everyone.

What to do when you start out to change?

1.    A guiding coalition – a few people guiding the leadership, guiding the change

2.    Make corresponding leadership/organizational changes

3.    Be serious about capacity building by teams

4.    Learning is the work – it is what happens on a day to day basis

(look for article - Professional develop a great way to avoid

 Change)

What can I get done in 100 days? 

·       Helps to keep the momentum and results. 

·       Short term wins.  Short term changes

·       Cancel some meetings – if it is not interactive or its not to make decisions, don’t meet.

What have you done to increase the EL to more proficiency?

·       High expectations

·       Don’t treat them differently if you treat all students individually (regarding the assessments and interventions).

·       Do ELD all day every day

·       What are you doing all day every day?

·       It’s the behavior of teaching

·       Its not about the certification they have it how they are using their knowledge they gained through the certification education.

·       Parent education, provide them everywhere

·       Provide after school programs throughout the district in community areas as well

What about unions?

·       Union Professionals vs. Professional Unionism – being a member of a union should stand for, “we will meet the needs of your child”.

·       When meeting with union members regularly, keep the focus on teaching and learning.

·        Treat them with respect and hopefully we can build the reputation “You can now trust the district office.”

In the very beginning, what did you do to Change?

·       Engage the school board immediately

·       Mandated that the teachers go through 3 professional development days

·       One page plan

·       Teachers are not our number one priority, it’s the students.

·       Take the risk, step out and be the start of the Change Agent

·       Be honest about our work – the outcome of our work

o   Hope is not a strategy

o   Don’t blame the kids

o   It’s about learning

·       We are doing this because this is what our kids need from us.

Early Learning – what are you doing?

·       The best K teachers

·       Pre-screening for all

·       Preschool is critical

·       Community involvement

·       Home outreach – 3 year olds

·       Poverty, At Risk, EL  (At Promise kids)

·       Parent Education

·       Early intervention with parents

·       First 5

·       Parent summit – keynote speakers

·       More effective the elementary school is , the more effective the site preschool will be

Today: System Leaders

What are the big issues we need to get?

·       Honor teachers in ways we haven’t seen?

·       We need to be able to focus on a few things and do them well, the results will follow.  Continuous improvement will lead to outstanding performance.

·       Empower with fewer mandates

·       Local control, leave us alone, give us our money in one pot, let us do our job…. But we have to do our job!

·       Don’t worry about compliance, do what is best for our kids, and have the data to back it up.

·       Release the restricted funds

·       Collaborate with all, develop great teams even across the state and not re-creating the wheel different ways

Take Away message:

·       Moral purpose – how to teach well

·       Tackle achievement gap with gusto, must all work together, need new and more partnerships

·       Ongoing journey and we will always be there

·       The Superintendents all had a job to do but with teams

·       We lead in a tremendous opportunity.  It’s an attitude we choose every day.  Model it.

·       We need to build systems that are so deep.  We need to know every child’s story in order to be able to support them.