« March 2007 | Main | May 2007 »
April 28, 2007
Walking the Talk from Stephanie Sandifer
I'm part of a group of school leaders who have a variety of backgrounds and perspectives on school leadership. The blog, Leader Talk, requires me to post once a month. I'm VERY impressed with the level of discussion on different topics. I'd read Tuesday's post from Stephanie Sandifer and was struck with her post on walking the talk. What makes this post so good from my perspective is that she gives specific additional resources on how to make your faculty meetings more productive.
I'd urge you to take a look at Leader Talk and especially at Stephanie's blog post on Leader Talk.
Great post, Stephanie. For me it's a bit like rolling the rock uphill-it may roll down periodically (I may revert to lecture more than I would like or have presenters that work with me spend more time lecturing than I would like), but she gives me gentle reminders on how to be more effective in my work with others.
Posted by chitch at 9:36 AM | Comments (0)
April 23, 2007
Vanilla is Not just Vanilla
In today’s chaotic school environment, it’s more important than ever that you are able to cast your school and your school's strengths in the most positive light. Parents and community members have more choices than ever in where to send their child. Teachers have more options in what and where they teach. One of your roles as a school executive is to help make your school stand out from the crowd so that people want to come and want to stay at your school. That’s the first lesson in marketing. Find ways to differentiate yourself from others. Dan Herman noted that a successful differentiation has two defining characteristics (a) it is not imitated by others and (b) brings you unmistakable success with those who may join in to your program (buy your services).
If you fail to differentiate, you end up like the stacks of vanilla ice cream that are stacked up in the frozen food section of the grocery store.
Our family loves ice cream. Almost every evening, we enjoy a small bowl or cup of ice cream. My wife and children are real ice cream connoisseurs. Once, I threw a small party at work for a coworker, Marie, who was moving out of state. Our teenage daughter wanted to go with me to the grocery store to get the ice cream and toppings. I looked up and down the aisles of ice cream and was astounded to see the different flavors of ice cream (Yes, I admit, my wife doesn’t allow me to do the grocery shopping because I am the world’s worst impulse buyer). I picked out a carton of vanilla ice cream from the freezer. Before I could pull it out, my daughter touched my hand and silently shook her head, then reached for a carton of Ben and Jerry’s ™ signature vanilla ice cream. I looked at the price of both of the cartons and gasped. “ I don’t see the difference between what I have (generic vanilla) and Ben and Jerry’s vanilla. They’re both vanilla.” My daughter shook her head and asserted, “It’s not just plain vanilla. This one (pointing to Ben and Jerry’s) is much better.” I persisted-“They both have the same ingredients and the same flavor. My daughter shook her head again and told me quite clearly that if I wanted to go down that path of buying only generic vanilla ice cream, hardly anybody would pick those cartons. “Even with all the toppings?”, I asked. “Dad,“ she responded in an exasperated tone, “you make whatever decision you want to make-after all it is your money and your party. But I am telling you that vanilla is NOT just vanilla.”
We ended up getting six cartons of ice cream but I persisted in the generic vanilla. After all, vanilla is vanilla. She told me to pick up the Ben and Jerrys ™ and see for myself.
At the party, I waited until the last person had gotten a bowl of ice cream. Guess which one was the only one left-that’s right the plain vanilla. Ben and Jerry cleaned my clock. I smothered my plain generic vanilla ice cream with toppings and got ready to eat crow when I got home that evening . The lesson? You have to find ways to differentiate your school from the others. You can’t be just plain vanilla. Vanilla is not just vanilla.
Posted by chitch at 8:21 AM | Comments (0)
April 15, 2007
Congratulations to 17 HS Leadership Teams
One of the projects I've been proud to be associated with is working in a 8 month long leadership program of high school principals and their teams. This group was noteworthy in several respects-this was the first time PEP has worked with a team of education leaders (principal, assistant principal, and teacher teams) and the first time PEP has worked closely with the Kenan Flagler Business School to develop and deliver the program. Last Friday was the graduation for this group of leaders. One of the key aspects of this program was a capstone project where each team had to identify a problem, determine how to fund a solution to the problem, create a written plan that included many aspects of a business case (problem, solution, marketing, detailed detailed project operational plan, financial considerations, and a 15 minute presentation to the entire group and five judges-I was fortunate to be one of the judges). The creativity, planning, and presentation was exciting to watch-there were so many great ideas that have the potential to help these school teams solve some of their pressing problems.
This capstone project took these leaders WAY out of their comfort zone and there was more than a bit of frustration as groups worked on their projects throughout October until this past week. Having had to do something similar for my Kenan Flagler program that I attended this past fall (I received a scholarship to this and my capstone resulted in a series of podcasts and my blog), I know that it was difficult. Yet to see how the different groups came together to develop and present their plans was an incredible honor for me. I'm very proud of them and their work and they should be recognized for this.
Congratulations to West Mecklenberg High School (Charity Bell, Bridgette Somerville, and Stephanie Hood) who won a $5,000 prize for their capstone project as well as Plymouth High School (Gloria McCray, Corey Crossen, and Linda Justis) who won both a $5,000 prize for their capstone project as well as being named as "The People's Choice" by their peers.
Congratulations are in order to all of the seventeen schools who are:
-Alamance Burlington Cummings High School (Lynn Briggs, James Matanzo, and Rhonda Robinson)
-Cumberland County EE Smith High School (Rene Corders, Candis Jones, and Frann Ladd)
-Durham Southern High School (Rod Teal, Darneise Massey, and Kathy Springfield-Cobb)
-Bertie High School (Sharon Bond and Jennifer Hill)
-Wayne County Goldsboro High School (Pat Burden, Gary Hales, and Harold Baines)
-Northwest Halifax High School (Sharon Arrington, Teicher Patterson, and Gloria Manning)
-Winston-Salem/Forsyth Carver High School (Carol Montague, Paula Boozer-Wilkins, and Freeda Ward)
-Durham Hillside High School (Earl Pappy, William Wynn, and Nelda Caddell)
-Southeast Halifax High School (Michael Earl, Phyllis Sanders, and Ethel Whitaker)
-Guilford Dudley High School (Phyllis Martin, Stephanie Gallop, and Malishai Woodbury)
-Northampton West High School (Willie Bell and Shonda Muhammed)
-Guilford Ben L Smith High School (Noah Rogers, Donna Matthews, and Lisa Comito)
-Mecklenberg Garinger High School (Jo Ella Ferrell, Pamela Davenport, and Chandra Shackleford)
-Mecklenberg EE Waddell High School (Stan Frazier, Jane Rollins, and Nancy Weber)
-Mecklenberg West Charlotte High School (John Modest, Ron Bailey, and Marrissa Anderson)
Thanks also to the members of Kenan Flagler Business School (Jim Johnson, Steve Orton, Ron Fischer, Catherine McClain, Pamela Santos, and Makeisha Williams) and to members of the PEP team (Brad Sneeden, Alisa McLean, Lolita Kimble, and Katherine Zeph).
Proud to be a part of this terrific group!
Chris
Posted by chitch at 4:09 PM | Comments (0)
April 6, 2007
Presentation Keys
This past week, I've been honored to have the opportunity to work with 51 outstanding school leaders who have been leading some very challenging schools. We've been working with them since July of this past year. PEP's partnership with the Kenan Flagler Business school was an invaluable success with one particular part of the program, a capstone project where they had to develop a program plan to solve one of their challenges. Their "final exam" was to deliver a 15 minute presentation to the group. I'll talk more about this next week, but I ran across this blog from Guy Kawasaki (the former Apple evangelist) who now has his own blog that I read weekly.
He had a terrific post on the 10/20/30 rule. I'll be sure to keep using his wisdom with my presentations. As another great post on presentations, check out Michael Hyatt's blog on preparation.
Chris
Posted by chitch at 4:57 PM | Comments (1)