Team Story 3: Edina Leadership Workshop

On Tuesday, August 10, I attended the Edina Action, Administration and Lead Team meeting.
Dr. Ric Dressen, our superintendent started by discussing today's realities:

• Mission, Vision and Core values have not changed.
• 85% of our work is mandated
• Policies and Work agreements
• Resources are limited!
• Evolving societal shift-moving into the management of info world, diversity, global
• Work Drive: Autonomy, mastery and purpose
• Power of Team
• Evolutionary Biology-how kids manage time and information
• Need for Celebration

The title of the session was "To 2010-2011 and Beyond!"

Toy Story 3

Fostering Collective Creativity

Find joy while mission-focused

Develop Team-protocols

Trust is a foundation

Use cross-disciplinary

Focus on Big 3 goals

1. Enhance the Students’ Personalized Learning Experiences

2. Improve the Coherence of Grades E-12 Programs and Services

3. Enhance the Support for and Effectiveness of the District Team

We then participated in a 0-100% Learning Activity around the following quotes:

Leadership is every one's business-Kouzes and Poster

Quinn's quote from Deep Change

Trust=(Credibility + Reliability +Intimacy)/self-interest Maister-Trusted Advisor

The 0-100% activity

5 minutes of individual reflection

15 minutes of sharing

5 minutes summary thought

Chris Holden, principal at C Elementary: If you want to be an authentic leader, you have to start with leadership through service. Our group came up with the following insight: Leadership through service has the potential to foster trust, clarify expectations and produce shared outcomes.

After listening to other group's ideas, we then began looking over the district's Leadership Plan for 2010-2011 including the "Big 3 Goals":

1. Enhancing the Student's Personalized Learning Experiences

• Enhancing Equity Efforts
• Implementation of Instructional Intervention
• Pilot Online, Hybrid and College Partnerships
• Study Summer Academy

2. Improve the Coherence of Grades E-12 Programs and Services
3. Enhance the Support for and Effectiveness of the District Team

Coherence rather than alignment: Logical Interconnections and Consistency

Hargreaves defines coherence as bringing diverse people together to work skillfully for common cause.. and has them moving in the same direction. The four catalysts are sustainable leadership, integrated networks, responsibility and accountability, differentiation and diversity.

The Power of Team

Great Community-We are a first ring suburb that is growing in enrollment. Not many are.

Great Families-Parent involvement is a plus here.

Great Staff

Great Youth

Leadership's Collective Creativity

District leadership shall seek to..

• Live by core values and norms
• value Team members
• utilize problem solving tools
• embrace Courageous Conversations
• Implement Policies
• advance Leadership Training
• find JOY in our work-finding the joy in reaching the mission

Norms

Respect Schedules

Communicate Openly and Honestly

Reveal Your Interests and Work to Common Good

Decisions shared publicly and conversations held confidentially

In the stuffing inside of us, why did we go into education...

We then looked at what district leadership does well. Our group identified:

• Identifies strengths and weaknesses
• Focus on the big picture
• strong mission and vision-living the mission and vision
• Forges partnerships with the community
• Knowledgeable and professional staff
• Service to others
• Hires quality staff

Areas where district leadership needs to grow included:

• More focus
• better boundaries
• Focus on what is good for ALL kids
• Learning is our primary service and function
• Team-more sharing and collaboration
• We need to learn with and from one another

Our group felt district leadership should consider...

• Adopt a classroom
• Ask Questions-find out what we don't know
• Hire more diverse staff
• Celebrating success in a more authentic way, daily basis
• Encourage our personal purpose and passion for what we do
• expanding our perspective and promote them

Overall, the session was a great way for me to see our district leadership in action, and it gave me insight into plans for the coming year.

Photo credit

Individual Reflection Log #2: 21 Responsibilities of a School Leader

This week, I completed a self-assessment of the 21 Responsibilities of a School Leader, and also completed an online survey of the responsibilities from MCREL. Below are my results. I have highlighted the high scores for each assessment in green, and low scores in red:

Responsibilities	The extent to which the principal…	Self-Assessment (1-5)	Balanced Leadership Profile
Affirmation	Recognizes and celebrates school accomplishments and acknowledges failures	4	4.67
Change agent	Is willing to and actively challenges the status quo	5	4.25
Communication	Establishes strong lines of communication with teachers and among students	3	4.00
Contingent reward	Recognizes and rewards individual accomplishments	3	3.50
Culture	Fosters shared beliefs and a sense of community and cooperation	4	3.50
Discipline	Protects teachers from issues and influences that would detract from their teaching time and focus	4	3.25
Flexibility	Adapts his or her leadership behavior to the needs of the current situation and is comfortable with dissent	4	4.00
Focus	Establishes clear goals and keeps those goals in the forefront of the school’s attention	2	4.17
Ideals and beliefs	Communicates and operates from strong ideals and beliefs about schooling	4	4.00
Input	Involves teachers in the design and implementation of important decisions and policies	4	3.67
Intellectual stimulation	Ensures that faculty and staff are aware of the most current theories and practices, and makes the discussion of these a regular aspect of the school’s culture	4	5.0
Involvement with Curriculum, Instruction and Assessment (CIA)	Is directly involved in the design and implementation of curriculum, instruction and assessment processes	5	4.67
Knowledge of CIA	Is knowledgeable about current curriculum, instruction and assessment processes	4	4.00
Monitor/evaluate	Monitors the effectiveness of school practices and their impact on student learning	3	4.00
Optimizer	Inspires and leads new and challenging innovations	4	4.50
Order	Establishes a set of standard operating procedures and routines	4	3.67
Outreach	Is an advocate and spokesperson for the school to all stakeholders	4	4.25
Relationships	Demonstrates and awareness of the personal aspects of teachers and staff	3	4.00
Resources	Provides teachers with materials and professional development necessary for the successful execution of their jobs	4	4.00
Situational awareness	Is aware of the details and undercurrents in the running of the school and uses this information to address current and potential problems	3	4.00
Visibility	Has quality contact and interaction with teachers and students	4	4.00

As I compare the results from the self-assessment and survey, I noticed that there were some discrepencies. For example, I scored myself relatively lowest on Focus, but on the survey, it was one of my top seven. Where I scored myself highest, in being a Change Agent and Involvement in Curriculum and Instruction, those correlated with the survey. This makes sense to me, for in my role as a technology integration specialist, I am working towards change in methodology within the curriculum, therefore, I must know something about both. Marzano, Waters and McNulty (2005) found that the change agent responsibility had a .25 correlation with student achievement, and involvement in curriculum and instruction a .20 correlation with achievement. Contingent reward, a responsibility that showed up as a weakness for me on both the self-assessment and survey had a .24 correlation with student achievement.

In my job, I work with staff in three different buildings. While taking the survey, I used one building as my filter for answering the questions.. This may have skewed my response, for if I were to evaluate my effectiveness and engagement with a different building I work at, I think my responses would have been different. In that building, I have been more active and visible due to a pilot I was running.

My survey report indicated that I was leading a second-order change, one in which requires a fundamental shift and transformation in how things are done, with no return to the old ways (National Academy for Academic Leadership, 2010). In the analysis of my results, MCREL noted the need to focus on Input, Order, Communication and Culture, as often these are perceived as overlooked when a 2nd order change is taking place. I see a close connection between these areas of responsibility and the perception of shared decision making. It has been my experience that often, administrators will ask for input from staff, after a decision has been made in order to confirm that decision. This suggestion indicates the need to gather input and communicate before, during and after a decision has been made.

Marzano, et. al. note that the correlations between Situational Awareness (.33) and Relationships (.18) are relatively close, and that all 21 responsibilities are an important aspect of educational leadership. This process has given me a better understanding of my strengths and weaknesses and areas I need to focus on.