Blogging From The Leadership Academy Day 1

For the next three days I will blog from the “Leadership Academy”.  The Leadership Academy is a joint effort between IU’s 8, 10, and 11.  Once a year all schools in the three IU’s (56 school districts) have an opportunity to come together to learn and share.  Every year there is a theme in which we center our learning around.  This year the theme is “launching ideas”.  Educators and the education system has always been inundated with ideas and reforms.  Some of these ideas have been better than others.  Regardless of their potential effectiveness, incorporating a new idea into a system is a challenge.  Oftentimes school districts will implement a new idea only to panic after the “implementation dip” that inevitably occurs and will abandon the idea.  It is very difficult to judge the true effectiveness of an idea or a reform if we do not allow enough time for the idea to get embedded in the system.  This year, we felt that spending time learning about project management and implementation would benefit all of our schools. 

Our society is changing from a command and control system where people are told what to do to a system where collaboration, collegiality and teaming are paramount. In the industrial model, there is a control structure in place to assure that what the “higher ups” deem necessary will occur in the way they want it to happen.  For example, think about how reading series in elementary school are often so scripted that teachers just read from a script.  This type of system is no longer viable IF you care about learning.  Organizations now must concentrate on collaboration and teaming to effectively change our practice. The result of this change for education is that the best ideas for learning will come from the people within the system.  We are coming to realize that a great idea does not have to be a “big idea”.  Ideas that lead to significant system change often seem small.  In other words, organic ideas coming from the people within the system is the future of system change.  Educators must be thoughtful about how they implement a new idea regardless of the origination of the idea.  The goal for this leadership conference is to share strategies and best practices centered on project management and idea implementation.  Changing learning to a system that is radically learner centered takes creative idea generation and thoughtful implementation practices.  The leadership academy is an important start for that change.