You're a Leader - Lead!

Several months ago I spoke at the ULearn Conference on the importance of leadership. This was in response to some thinking about the nature of leadership and the ways in which we model managing ourselves and relating to others. I asked the audience to consider which of the following they thought were 'good' - that is at least average - parliamentarians, early childhood centres, schools and teachers' colleges. It came as no surprise that parliamentarians averaged 40%. Teachers' colleges fared slightly better, then schools, then early childhood centres. The next question was if x% of these schools are good...what percentage are great? The figure was not great!! If we look at this in terms of within school variance we can see that there can be significant differences in the education received by students in the same school. As a leader I want every teacher to be great for every child. It may sound impossible but why would leaders strive for anything less. If it was your child or grandchild in a class with a mediocre teacher would you think that was okay?

Don't get me wrong, I'm not blaming teachers. Leaders have a responsibility for creating strong relationships that build capacity of staff and students. One of my mentors, Wilf Jarvis, puts it like this, "Leaders are distinguished by their skills in transforming hidden potential in children, pupils and colleagues in demonstrated capacities." - Wilf Jarvis, 4QL program, 1998.

If you want to listen to the podcast of my presentation, to hear some ways in which you can develop your leadership click on the link below.

Cheryl Doig's Spotlight at Ulearn08

Leaders for Future Schooling

The ULearn conference highlighted the need for our schools to change and showcased many schools and clusters that are using information communication technologies to progress this.The following short video describes how school leaders need to develop the adult learners in their communities. This is the challenge for 21st century leaders. How can we be effective leaders of change through others rather than as the expert in all things...



This video is one of many appearing on EdTalks - a new site featuring short video clips for educators. Check it out at http://edtalks.org/ You can subscribe to these via itunes too!

Leadership for the Future

This week is the ULearn conference in Christchurch, New Zealand. I will be presenting a spotlight called "You're a leader -lead!" We need strong leaders in education - ones who have to courage to move forward while still having the wisdom to take others with them, and indeed develop collective intelligence. Leaders need to understand themselves as learners and to think about the impact they have on other people. They also need to relate to others - leadership is not an individual pursuit! Below this post you have the opportunity to undertake a short survey on Relating to Others. The survey has been developed in Google Docs and is based on the 'Relating to Others' key competency from the NZ Curriculum. If we are serious about the need for students to develop in each of the five key competencies (Managing Self; Relating to Others; Participating and Contributing; Thinking; and Using Language, Symbols & Texts) don't we have to lead by example? More than ever, ethical and moral leadership are critical to growing humanity. Yet we seem to be struggling to develop alignment between our espoused values and what we actually do in practice. Take time to reflect on yourself as a leader and who you are as a person.