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)
May 25, 2007
Pause for Thanks
This short post is simply to honor and remember the brave men and women who have served so honorably in the military and who have died in service for their country. It's easy to think of Memorial Day as the start of the summer season, Indy car racing, boats, camping, vacations and lots of other summer activities. Yet, none of this would be possible were it not for the actions of the millions who have died to protect our freedom and to the families of those who have lost loved ones serving our country.
I've had the honor to meet, work, laugh, and cry with men and women who either currently serve in the military, or who are veterans. Some bear physical or emotional scars, yet to a person, they are proud of their service and when they do talk about their time in the Armed Forces, they invariably touch on either taking care of their brothers and sisters or protecting our country.
The Raleigh News and Observer columnist, Dennis Rogers, has an occasional column entitled, The Home Front. I've read Dennis' column for over ten years and I have to say that this column is one of the most powerful I have read. It is worth your time to read his column, especially this Memorial Day weekend, but also every week.
May our fallen heroes continue to be remembered and thanked. And may we also remember and thank our friends and neighbors who have and continue to serve.
Posted by chitch at 9:00 AM | Comments (0)
May 5, 2007
Transparency (or I'll go first)
This past week, I read Michael Hyatt's blog on the scourge of cynicism. Michael has taken another bold step in being a transparent leader. He is evidently having some challenges in implementing change at his organization. Now, every organization can and should go through organizational change. It is unrealistic to think that change can happen painlessly. What I was impressed with in Mike's blog is his utter and complete transparency as a leader.
Now, to his lesson applied to me...
I'm fortunate to work in a very exciting place where great things are happening for leaders and students in NC public schools. I spend about half of my time in management tasks and the other half of my time either working with various individuals to develop and deliver outstanding training and professional development. Mike's implicit point on transparency led me to audiotape myself engaging in some training with school principals on time management and delegation. I'm somewhat embarrassed by what I heard myself saying (or not saying). When I listened to the recording, I found myself using WAY too many instances of imprecise speaking. I heard myself saying "it", "things (or with my Texas drawl-thaings", and other words with imprecise meaning. Did my group of clients notice? I hope not. What it taught me was the incredible value of either listening or seeing yourself in a public speaking situation. Transparency. Or adapt Allen Iverson's rant on "practice-I'll be sure to practice and prepare in greater depth before any presentation.
Now, I'll likely post the series of podcasts for my Principal Fellows. Yet, I learned an invaluable lesson on how to improve my speaking skills. Now, I went first. My suggestion to you is to be more transparent-half of my work is speaking and training in public or school venues. Most of your public speaking work is either with principals (if you are in central office) faculty, community members or parents. Take the leap and audiotape yourself-nobody has to know your results. You'll be surprised at what you learn.
Practice? I'm absolutely no franchise player so I'm gonna stop talking about practice and start practicing!
Chris
Posted by chitch at 8:13 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)
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)
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 20, 2006
Do You Follow Me?
Jack McCall, one of PEP's finest teachers and friends, remarked during his conversation with 65 principals in PEP's Leadership Program for Experienced Principals, started off his conversation with the assertion that he is nutty about principals. One of his key points is that principals are principal TEACHERS. He strongly urged principals to spend your time with teachers.
This was a terrific combination with Mike Rutherford's (another PEP alumni) session the previous day on leveraging leadership time by working with teachers. Both of them noted that the more time you spend with those who get the work done, the better the quality and quantity of the work.
Mike called it a leverage point. Jack said that education was not filling a pail, it was setting their hair on fire with the thirst for learning.
Jack's other comment was that every decision a leader makes leaves a footprint.
Jack had an engaging way of making sure that we got the message-he kept asking "Do you follow me? Does that make sense to you?
Yeah, Jack and Mike-you both make terrific sense. Thanks for reminding us of the key points.
Posted by chitch at 4:24 PM | Comments (1)
November 20, 2006
Thank a Vet Today
Veteran's Day was last Saturday and I missed the opportunity to thank the thousands of Veterans in our local Veteran's Day Parade.
This past week, I was fortunate enough to sit in on some classes where I was snout to jowl next to a number of men and women who were logistics experts and learning more about management and leadership. I have not frequently enough taken the time to simply say "thank you" to these vets. Some went unwillingly, some still battle demons, most are proud of their service, and many are on both sides of the debate over our involvement in the Middle East,but whatever their story, our country is "The land of the free because of the brave."
Thanks to Scott, Roger, Larry, Maria, Tim, Jeff, Dan, Don, Jeramiah and the untold number like you who have kept our families safe.
Posted by chitch at 7:26 PM | Comments (0)
November 2, 2006
A School Principal's Blog
Last evening, I ran across a blog by a school principal in AZ. I've never met Steve Poling but I enjoyed reading his perspectives on the principalship.
Hats off to him for sharing his perspective.
Interesting reading.
C
Posted by chitch at 10:40 PM | Comments (1)
September 21, 2006
AURA
This past August, we had our Principal Fellows Orientation for class 13. One of the most powerful speakers we had was General Don Broome, who spoke to us about how to retain and keep great people. I was reminded that there are several parallels between military service and our work in public service. While military service has a longer "contract", it is critical for the military to retain their troops, rather than spend additional time and money training new inductees. School executives have a similar issue- how do you keep the people in your organization that you want to keep? General Broome's comments were inspiring to say the least. He noted that the US Army has an acronym "AURA" that they use to help retain members of their organization:
A-Acceptance. How do you accept new people into the process?
U-Understanding. Does each member of the organization understand the goals and mission? How are we doing this-formally and informally?
R-Recognition. Give proper and immediate recognition
A-Appreciation. Demonstrate appreciation.
General Broome mentioned that one of the biggest ways that he has found is to find ways to take care of the troops and their families-simple gestures such as flowers, cards, and short notes go a long way as reminders that the individual is valuable to the organization.
Thanks General-You're an unsung hero.
Posted by chitch at 7:56 PM | Comments (0)