June 28, 2007
Moving to New Blog Site
Folks,
This is my last post with the Center for School Leadership Development. I've been honored to have had the chance to work with many of you in various roles over the past 5 years.
You can continue reading and "joining the fray" by going to my new blog site, Your Executive Edge. The URL is listed at the bottom of this post.
Best to you and I look forward to continuing the conversation, finding and sharing tips and tools to help you become even more effective.
http://yourexecutiveedge.wordpress.com/
Posted by chitch at 9:00 AM | Comments (0)
June 27, 2007
Thanks to Brad Sneeden
As many of you know, Brad Sneeden will be leaving the Principals' Executive Program to serve as Superintendent of Carteret County Schools, beginning in July 2007.
I've been exceedingly fortunate to have the chance to work with lots of terrific people at PEP, but I've especially been lucky to have had the chance to work with Brad. He has led PEP to find ways to serve more school executives by expanding the Leadership Program for New Principals and Leadership Program for Aspiring Principals, initiating a program for experienced principals (Leadership Program for Experienced Principals), rallying support for school executives with the State of the Principalship, regrowing partnerships with the RESAs around the state, initiating a partnership with multiple groups to create an Executive Leadership Academy for school superintendents, and a multitude of other initiatives that have significantly increased the capacity of school executives.
Thanks to Brad for his leadership, his vision, his energy, and his passion for helping to continue to increase the capacity of school executives.
I'll miss working with him as closely as I have, but Carteret County students and families are getting a terrific individual as superintendent.
Posted by chitch at 10:21 AM | Comments (0)
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)
March 23, 2007
Leader Talk Blog by Scott McLeod
This past month, I was approached by Scott McLeod at the University of Minnesota to participate as a monthly blogger for his blog
Leader Talk has bloggers from across the globe, all focused upon the topic of educational leadership by educational leaders.
I'm humbled by the opportunity to be a part of this.
My blog entry is Out of The Sandbox.
Scott's doing a great service and facilitating reach for educational leaders. If you are intrigued by the idea of blogging but not sure how you as a school executive can make use of blogging-see how many of the contributors use blogging as a communication tool-almost like a "reference-able" electronic newsletter to faculty and the community.
Posted by chitch at 10:08 PM | Comments (1)
February 25, 2007
Three New Blog Voices from the real world
I've been checking out some new bloggers (to me) on the education front while doing the behind the scenes work with three of PEP's residential programs (in addition to processing applications for the Principal Fellows Program). Gotta tell you, I've got the best gig in the business! I remain incredibly impressed with the quality of school executives I get a chance to work with in these residential programs (high school principals, experienced principals, and new principals) as well as the quality of the applicants to the Principal Fellows Program. But I had to take a break to check out some fresh voices in the blog world.
Ran across these three different education leadership type bloggers. What's cool about them is that they are in the trenches-good perspectives. I hope their blogs will cause you to think and then add them to your blog rolls.
1-Scott Elias
2-Brian Saxon
3-Steve Poling
Check them out. Good stuff
Posted by chitch at 4:53 PM | Comments (1)
February 16, 2007
Writing Tips
It's really interesting and intriguing to continue this blog. I'm getting the opportunity to hear from a tremendous number of people who have enriched me professionally. My newest blog voice is Dr. Scott McLeod, a professor and attorney at the University of Northern Minnesota. Scott's website is very robust and is one that I have now bookmarked, especially with his work on the educational leadership uses of technology.
For those of you engaged in writing papers, I offer "The McLeod Hints for Effective Writing". Good stuff. Between his work and Dan Lewandowski's expertise at PEP, I hope to be a better writer.
You may also want to check out his blog and his podcasts-I'm going to try to learn from him on how he creates his casts.
Good guy to know. Thanks to Scott Elias who put me in touch with Scott McLeod.
Chris
Posted by chitch at 4:23 PM | Comments (1)
December 10, 2006
Blogs I Pay Attention To
Now that I am paying a bit more attention to different blogs, I thought it would be some use to share which blogs I read regularly and what each blog's focus is.
David Maister: Maister (pronounced May-ster) is the preeminent expert on professional service firms.
Tom Peters: Tom (same guy who wrote In Search of Excellence 25 years ago) is another professional service firm expert whom I find as a terrific bookend to Peter Drucker (he has said that he doesn't like the comparison but...). In my view, Drucker outlines "WHAT" excellent executives do, Peters outlines "HOW" to do it. Peters is irreverent, smart-alecky, and consistently spot on.
Bob Sutton: Sutton is a relatively new expert for me to follow. He has written several books on organizational dynamics and innovation. His blog focuses on design. I'm coming to better understand how designing (rather than "structuring"-semantics matter) programs and services helps people to use them more effectively.
Michael Hyatt: Mr. Hyatt is a sometimes blogger. He is the CEO of Thomas Nelson Publishers and writes From Where I Sit. It's intended for an internal audience, but this gentleman is INCREDIBLY transparent and gives a tremendous perspective.
Guy Kawasaki: Kawasaki is a former Apple employee (I think he headed up the Macintosh Product team), who has gone solo-his thoughts on design and work make me think.
Merlin Mann: Merlin's blog is one that focuses on individual productivity. It has a Mac bias on some of his postings but the ideas help me tremendously.
These are the folks that make me think. Check them out.
And PLEASE send me some ideas on some other thought leaders.
Posted by chitch at 10:25 AM | Comments (4)