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