GLP BLOG
Hope for the Best, Prepare for the Worst.
Strategy Every Day: The Power of Agile Teams
On Wednesday, February 26, Stephanie Rogen and Randall Dunn (head of Latin School of Chicago) facilitated a three-hour workshop on strategy implementation at the 2020 NAIS Annual Conference in Philadelphia. As Randall described at the start of the session, it was a “workshop, not a listen-shop” — while both Stephanie and Randall presented a number of key insights for the attendees, there was also plenty of time for everyone to work collaboratively and brainstorm some actionable ideas that they could pilot when they returned to school. (Click here to access the toolkit that workshop attendees used to guide their work during the session!) Here are some takeaways from the workshop:
Why Coaches and Facilitators are for Everyone (or why we should all have a yoga practice)
From Networking to Netbuilding: The Inaugural GLP Women’s Leadership Summit
Summer 2019 Reading List
While the phrase “summer vacation” might be somewhat of a misnomer for educators (and especially for those in leadership roles), the summer months nevertheless provide ample opportunities for reading and reflecting. What you read over the summer has the power to transform the upcoming school year — here are a few recommendations to help spark powerful ideas about teaching, learning, and organizational strategy.
Elevate and Float: Roger Brown on Dealing with Disruption
This week, we had the privilege of leading a deep dive workshop with approximately 75 heads of school at AISNE’s Heads Retreat. The setting (Cape Cod) was restful and AISNE staged a wonderful two day retreat that offered real time for reflection, structured work, and organic conversations.
We loved every minute of our work with Heads, and we also loved listening to AISNE’s other guest speaker. He was funny, warm, and he captured beautifully our belief that great leadership and strategy is all about making clear choices about what to do and what not to do.
Equity in Learning: Essential Reading from Rob Riordan, High Tech High Graduate School of Education
Conversations about equity in schools continue to be of interest and importance. We notice these conversations often focus on related cultural, political, and social prescriptions, via specific curricula and programs for adults and students. We wonder about other approaches to thinking about equity.
On Anecdotes, Exceptions, and Outliers: Harnessing the Power of Story from Multiple Perspectives
I had the very good fortune this July to attend a Challenge Success Summer Leadership Seminar. As it happened, the Principal and Vice Principal of my own children’s public middle school were also in attendance. After a busy morning of workshops, I took advantage of the lull before lunch to share with the two school administrators an anecdote with my perspective on the preceding school year. To sum up, my story went something like this: “I just wanted to say that overall I am very satisfied with what I assume is the school’s policy to not assign homework over holidays and long breaks, with one exception. For the winter and spring breaks both of my children, in grades 6 and 8, were asked to complete sections of a review book for the state math assessment. What concerns me is the message that it sends about the values of our school. We say we have a commitment to breaks as downtime for students and their families to unwind and spend quality time with one another, without the stress of homework. But when that commitment is measured against the requirements of standardized testing schedules, we allow the test to take precedence. We are in essence communicating that we value performance on a standardized test more than we value the need of families to have quality time with one another while on vacation.”
Fall 2018 Reading List
Return to Preikestolen: Musings on Vision and Strategy
If you’ve read Creating Schools That Thrive (and if not, please do!) you may recall my story of hiking Pulpit Rock (Preikestolen), Norway in March, 2009. The story of the hike became my metaphor for strategic design -- for distilling the language of strategy and helping clients make sense of the process to design and execute strategy.