Preparing for the Leadership Retreat . . .

It is difficult for me to believe, but we are close to the start of another school year.  One of the benchmarks for me is the Principal /Teacher Leadership Retreat and that starts next Monday.  Our lesson plan calls for me to be up front much more than the norm in our leadership training, requiring me to spend more hours reflecting on the content and how best to deliver it.

The driver for this is partly my concern with TPEP and the Common Core consuming our time and energy.  Yes, they are important and both require significant support to balance the mandated change demanded by state legislation and direction.  Though both are big change initiatives, as leaders we must continue to focus on the other contributors to our success over time and what we are learning from research about what building leadership teams do to increase student achievement.

Our task will be a difficult one as those in the room will come with mental models about what the focus of the work over the two days should be that may not be totally aligned with the work we have planned.  Our success will be partly dependent on our capacity to place them in a position where they can suspend their assumptions and be open to embracing the work.  We have some new tools that we believe will support their reflection and capacity to identify structures and strategies to move the work forward on our focus for the two days; SUPPORTING TEACHER GROWTH on our CLASSROOM 10 journey.  It is energizing and critical work and I am excited to be a part of it.