Tuesday, January 29, 2013

Moving forward with system tools . . .

I decided to share some of our work today as an administrative leadership team focused on TPEP implementation.

Below are the mental models that surfaced as each grade level grouping shared their purpose statements and others in the room identified the mental models that they believe were driving the purpose statements.  Those listed are the result of the mental models we believe were embedded in the purpose statements and other statements and questions that emerged in the conversation.


Each group was then given the opportunity to create a concept map that captured the purpose statement and  using circles, identified the proportion of their time spent on different job functions.  We gained a greater understanding of our system and appreciation for the complexity of a building administrator's work from the mental model conversations and the focus on how building administrators are allocating their time.


At our next meeting we will continue to use the concept maps to dig more deeply into the work of building level administrators and to look for leverage points that provide more time and/or support for a focus on TPEP opportunities.  Mike Hansen is planning and facilitating this work.  His transparency about the difficulty of planning for and supporting our reflective conversations is refreshing and welcome and his skill and commitment are resulting in moving this work forward.

I will share that for me it was a positive and productive day.  The exit slips using the Experience Cube framework suggest that others in the room shared similar thinking.  As always, I would welcome a comment sharing your experience from any participant that may be reading this post.  


1 comment:

Terra said...

While not a participant I do think it would be interesting to hear teacher feedback on how they view the principals work that is illustrated in the pictures. For me, The Current reality/Mental Models work looks great. I think that is what every educator would strive for but today's relaties in our schools are far different for many reasons. In my building I definitely see something very different being practiced day to day than what's listed on the charts. It's unfortunate.