>1) When I am willing to do the job our head does for his salary, I will
>grumble, but not until then. The landscape of headship has so changed in
>recent years that it demands a skill set and a mental attitude that are
>exceedingly and increasingly rare.
Without grumbling (tactfully, of course) from within how are our leaders asked to
reflected upon his or her actions?
>
>
>2) Daniel Pink is a journalist who, like Malcolm Gladwell, has been able to
>identify some trends and ironies in the way our society works. I tend to be
>more impressed by the thoughtful identification of trends than the
>gadfly-ish noting of ironies, although the theme has worked for the whole
>freako- genre as it has for Gladwell and seems to be for Pink. I liked A
>WHOLE NEW MIND because it posited some important ideas that educators should
>be thinking about and packaged those ideas in a compelling way.
Still, much of the research he refers to is from the 1980's and is "merely" a good
presentation and integration of research and ideas at least fifteen years old.
>
>
>That said, this discussion isn't about Daniel Pink but about "innovation."
>I'd be interested to know if anyone can identify a ten-year period in the
>history of American independent schools when there has been as much change
>and innovation in practice, program, management, and governance structures
>as in the past decade.
>
> - Consider, working backward from that list, the change in the
> expectations for boards and board leaders in the degree of sophistication
> they must have about everything from finance to educational practice;
> consider the degree to which board leadership development has lept to the
> fore as part of the critical work of effective boards. Consider the role of
> the head in managing this process.
All relatively true, but, in my experience, the compositions of the board have changed
little, most are risk adverse because their primary legal function is fiscal. Most
operate on a year to year basis despite five year or long range plans. I saw more
interest at the board level for educational vision fifteen years ago than I do now. What
Boards focus upon is what a head attends to. As the head reports to the Board, it is
their expectations that become primary.
>
> - Consider the financial complexity of operating an independent school
> and planning and executing daily and long-term financial programs. A decade
> ago only a few schools had even considered bond-issues, as one basic
> example. Budgeting, fund-raising, and enrollment management now take place
> in an environment when financial pressures (even pre-2008 crash) and
> competition in the marketplace are extreme.
The late 1970's and the early 1990's had similar marketplace pressures, though without
bond-issues.
> Every successful head has had to learn about these things more or less on the job or
>through other
>administrative jobs. I think we can safely assume corporate MBA types
> wouldn't want to run an independent school at what they would regard as the
> "low" level of compensation, and so most of our heads are still rising from
> the ranks of teachers and administrators, even if they have acquired other
> experience in the for- or nonprofit worlds. We teacher-folk may not see
> these changes as "innovation," but to a sitting head who started a career
> before 1995 or so, I imagine these feel like a 100% turnover in management
> technique.
IMHO, management is still an art, though some of the tasks may have changed, the skills
and techniques remain much the same. Vision, Communication and Decision-making are still
the primary skills of management.
>
> - Consider curriculum. Sorry, but I think schools
, a picture taken in 1900 and a picture taken today in many classrooms are still
indistinguishable,
> and teachers
, some,
> have
> innovated amazingly, taking advantage of changes in technology as well as
> understandings of cognition and child development. I will admit that much of
> this innovation has been teacher-driven and catch-as-catch-can, but momentum
> is growing for institutional change that is administratively led based on
> board-
far too infrequently
>and head-driven
too often economic
>strategic thinking; the ideas are simply too compelling and the value of such
>institutional innovation too great. Check out the skill sets being sought in head and
>senior administrative job listings. If we're just grumpy that schools haven't become
>all-Twitter-based or that we haven't disrupted all of our classrooms by going online
>yet, there is a wealth of innovation in curriculum and assessment that is being
>generally implemented at the moment that was also "rare" in the 1990s: think rubrics,
>problem- and project-based learning, "backwards planning,"
> differentiated instruction, multiple-intelligence learning... The list goes on.
My parents were using these kinds of tools when they were in the classroom nearly 50
years ago. Can we afford to wait that long to adapt our education style to the students
of today? As a CEO of a nationally prominent education organization once told me when I
asked how these changes were going to be made: "We'll have to wait until the heads have
retired and the younger new ones replace them." The acceptance for future shock does not
compel me to feel sorry for their situation. As you point out administrators are not
leading the way, it is in classroom where teachers do the innovation. Who is leading, who
is providing vision? Who needs to be?
>Where once these ideas were being implemented by enthusiasts at the
> classroom level, many are now expectations at the school level. Heads have
> had to learn about and lead in bringing these ideas into schools--often
> battling traditional teachers and ideas about traditional education in the
> marketplace (and on their boards, as has been pointed out) along the way.
In my experience we work on one year contracts in theory but perpetuity in practice with
cause being the most often used reason for non renewal. While I am in favor of compassion
for the aging teacher, battling traditional teachers and ideas about traditional
education does offer good reason to let good traditional, but unwilling to adapt,
teachers go if that is the decision needed to follow the vision.
>
>
>Over the past year and a half classroom teachers at our school have had to
>learn all about Web 2.0 and how to make the best use of laptop computers in
>our classrooms. They've had to master Jing and to "digitize" their
>previously "analog" curricula.
It requires different thinking not innovation. At first my curriculum did not change
(1995 or so) I just put my curriculum and syllabi online. I overlayed my curriculum on
the technology. As I played with the technology I envisioned a revamping of my curricula.
Even though I moved out of the classroom in 2001, I see little practical advancement in
the classrooms today.
>Our head has had to learn these things (and he has) to lead and communicate the change
>that they represent in practice, and he's had to master a whole new level of financial
>information to lead the institution through the financial crisis. When his phone has
>rung in the past year or so I'm guessing there has always been the prospect of news that
>could rock his--and the school's--world in ways that don't compare to what phone calls
>to my office could portend. He's had to develop a whole new understanding of enrollment
>management, tuition and financial aid structures, and refine his work around
>development. (And this is in a school that has weathered the crisis well.) In keeping
>our place moving forward
>(and my job intact, FWIW), he has had to "innovate" more than any single individual in
>our building. And I think that as a head he represents the positive edge of the norm,
>not some abnormality.
>
>If you see a lot of heads around who haven't kept up with this learning
>curve, I'd submit that you are looking at a bunch of heads who aren't long
>for their positions, at any pay level.
>
>If we want to see more innovation, let's first make sure that this
>innovation is educationally and operational sound, backed up by both
>research (whatever the heck that means in education), experience, and common
>sense. The hardest task is to convince the marketplace that any educational
>innovation is valuable or even good, and this is where heads have to reality
>earn their keep.
>
>
> - as educational leaders (or in some cases, where educational
> administration has been placed in the hands of subordinates, managers)
> within the building who are willing to demand that teachers grow in their
> practice and professionalism to meet the needs of students and that programs
> evolve along the same lines
> - and as promoters of new and valuable educational ideas that will both
> educate the community about effective teaching and learning in the 21st
> century and draw to the school families and new teachers who are excited
> about these ideas
> - and, finally, as managers who can balance the traditions, heritage, and
> missions of their schools against both conservative market forces that
> obstruct innovation and the imperatives of change that writers like Daniel
> Pink have identified but that educators like themselves, and like us, must
> turn into effective practice.
All of the above requires that the head pay particular attention to the educational
vision, the research and the technological changes. Too often, and compensation reflects
this, the fiscal vision, in the immediate term, overrules. In second place comes vision,
reflection on educational research and how it may impact our vision and the rapidly
evolving technological innovations in our world.
I could be mistaken,
David Withrow
"I am too old to wait for the world to catch up :-)."
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