SRN LEADS/Stanford University: School Redesign Network — Leadership, Equity & Accountability in Districts & Schools

LEADS mapleton residency

Event materials (password required)

The residency will be grounded in Andy Hargreaves and Dean Fink’s work on the issue of sustainable leadership

 

LEADS Mapleton LEADS Residency:
Building sustainable leadership practices
March 31-April 2, 2009

Building on our shared experience in Miami, Milwaukee, and Austin, the Mapleton Public Schools will host our next LEADS residency this spring. The Mapleton residency takes place from Tuesday, March 31, through Thursday, April 2, and will focus on the issue of sustainable leadership and how districts can build such practices throughout their systems.

Residency Objectives

• Understand the principles of successful sustainable leadership.
• See the principles of sustainable leadership applied through a case study of Mapleton’s reform.
• Apply the principles of sustainable leadership through planning for sustainability within your own context/system.

Residency Overview and Agenda

The residency will be grounded in Andy Hargreaves and Dean Fink’s work on the issue of sustainable leadership. Hargreaves and Fink define sustainable leadership in the following way:

“Sustainable leadership matters, spreads and lasts. It is a shared responsibility, that does not unduly deplete human or financial resources, and that cares for and avoids exerting negative damage on the surrounding educational and community environment. Sustainable leadership has an activist engagement with the forces that affect it, and builds an educational environment of organizational diversity that promotes cross-fertilization of good ideas and successful practices in communities of shared learning and development.” (Hargreaves & Fink, The Seven Principles of Sustainable Leadership, 2003)

Through their research, they have identified seven principles of sustainable leadership:

1. Depth
2. Length
3. Breadth
4. Justice
5. Diversity
6. Resourcefulness
7. Conservation

We are pleased to announce that Dr. Fink will join us for the residency. Dean Fink is an international educational development consultant. He is a former superintendent and principal with the Halton Board of Education in Ontario, Canada. In his career he has taught at all levels of education from primary grades to graduate school. He has been a senior leader at both elementary and secondary levels. His most recent books are Sustainable Leadership, with Andy Hargreaves (Jossey Bass, 2006), and Leadership for Mortals: Developing and Sustaining Leaders of Learning for (Corwin/Paul Chapman, 2006). His next book, due in 2009. is “The Succession Challenge: Building Educational Leadership Capacity through Succession Management” (Sage, Corwin).

Dr. Fink will open the residency with an overview of the seven principles of sustainable leadership during our working dinner on Tuesday evening. On Wednesday, we will continue to explore the seven principles as well as the issue of succession management through:

• Facilitated dialogue with Dr. Fink
• An examination of the principles in action in Mapleton (i.e., learning the story of Mapleton’s change process, discussions with key Mapleton leaders, school visit, etc.)
• Application of the principles to the local context of each LEADS district

Thursday will conclude with each district making a brief presentation applying the principles of sustainable leadership within their own systems (e.g., within a district, at a school, within a department, among members of a board of education, etc).

Logistics

Dates
Tuesday, March 31: Residency begins with a working dinner at the Westin Hotel starting at 6 p.m.
Wednesday, April 1: Residency continues from 7:30am to 4:00p.m. The evening is yours to have dinner on your own in the Rocky Mountain air and work as a team.
Thursday, April 2: Residency continues at 8 am and concludes at 1 p.m.

Who should participate?
District teams of up to six individuals — Superintendents, school board members, central office administrators, principals and anyone else who works to develop sustainable leadership within a system.

Hotel
Rooms have been reserved at the Westin Hotel located at 10600 Westminster Boulevard in Westminster, CO, at a rate of $139/night. To receive this group rate, please make reservations by Thursday, March 5, 2009 by calling the hotel at 303-410-5000. Please ask for the “Stanford University group rate.”

Air Travel
Mapleton is directly adjacent to Denver and thus the Denver International Airport is the best option for incoming flights. The hotel and district are an approximately 45 minute drive from the airport.

Shuttle service is available from the airport to the hotel via Boulder Super Shuttle. For more information, please see this link.

Meals
Tuesday’s working dinner as well as breakfast and lunch on Wednesday and Thursday will be provided for you. Dinner on Wednesday evening will be on
your own.

For more information
Please e-mail Peter Ross at peter.ross@stanford.edu

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"LEADS focuses on a critical arena in school reform, and it is founded on operating principles that promote high quality practice and effective outcomes. First, all arrows point to instruction. The implicit, sometimes explicit theory guiding the work is that districts are there to support effective teaching, and every practice and policy needs to be assessed in that light. Second, it emphasizes the importance of evidence - decisions informed by careful analyses of information - which is so critical and all too rare at both district and school levels. Finally, LEADS stresses the importance of documenting knowledge that can be shared among participants and beyond. We spend too much time re-inventing the wheel in education. Learning about best practices is just as important at the district level as it is at the classroom level, and LEADS participants contribute to as well as benefit from that knowledge base."

— Deborah Stipek, Dean, Stanford University School of Education