Day 11 & Beyond: Reflection on Leadership and Innovation

My final task in the CPCO PQP 10 day challenge is to create a post summarizing my thoughts on what it means to be a digital leader. This happens to coincide with my participation at the MISA Innovation conference today in London. Rather serendipitous!

In one of the open spaces, discussion centered around teacher/administration buy-in. How do we move the system forward? A key concept we kept coming back to was the idea of partnerships.

- Partnerships between administrators and teachers where risk is embraced. This relies heavily on trust and both individuals taking a co-learning stance. It's about asking the 'What if...' and 'How might ...' questions.
- Partnerships between teachers perhaps through demonstration classrooms or informal mentorship opportunities.
- Partnerships between administrators, teachers, and students (learning with and from each other).

Building these partnerships requires time and the alignment of resources with priorities. Changing the culture is a slow process.

It was also shared that the 20% (early innovation adopters) naturally take risks and embrace failure as a part of the journey, however moving the 60% over the tipping point requires 'small wins'. They need to feel successful in order to build efficacy. I wonder how early adopters sharing their failures might impact the mindset of others who take more timid steps forward.


So what is my Day 11 going to look like?
Helping others make progress on work that they feel is meaningful. This will require asking what it is that they want for student learning, providing support, and helping them feel successful with where they are at. It's about their journey.

Comments

  1. Partnerships! I was fortunate enough to attend the same session and I remember thinking about relationships and how important they are to leading people down the road of innovation and other wonderful things that make our schools great places.

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