8
Dr. Tony Wagner, Harvard
University, notes that there are
two achievement gaps in this
country. The first is the gap
between
the
educational
experiences of middle-class
children and those of most poor
and minority children. The
second gap is that between what
even our very best schools are
teaching and testing versus what
all students will need to be
successful in today’s globally
interconnected,
technology-
suffused, information economy.
New educational paradigms
require an emphasis on critical thinking, collaborative
problem-solving,
creativity
and
innovation,
information fluency and media literacy, data
synthesis and analysis, and the active, applied use of
many other higher-level cognitive skills,
much more
frequently
than we currently are doing in our
classrooms. This change not only requires school
systems to provide new and relevant training for
teachers, but also for leaders.
Quality leadership is an essential factor for
making change in education. Just ask any classroom
teacher who has had a particularly good (or bad)
building principal, and they will tell you stories.
Stories of triumph or tragedy, depending on which
type of the leaders they were paired with. In
Community Consolidated School District 59, we
believe that if our expectation for staff is to be
distinguished, our expectation for leaders should be
the same.
I
f nearly 1,000 schools
involved in a major technology implementation, they
state “the principal’s ability to lead change is critical.”
As Simon Sinek says, “There are leaders and there
are those who lead.” Those who lead inspire staff to
follow and build the capacity and advance an
organization.
I’m very honored that I have the opportunity to
work in CCSD 59, where our entire administrative
team, including our Chief Innovation Officer Ben
Grey, is pushing and challenging each other to be the
latter.
As part of that effort, this year we created the
21st Century Leadership Academy. Every member of
our administrative team is taking part and, over the
course of this year, each participant will engage in 63
hours of specific, focused professional development
regarding skill, content and knowledge necessary for
21st century leadership. That’s a combined total of
2,520 professional development hours for our
leadership team.
There are plenty of conversations about the
qualifier “21st century,” and wherever you stand on
the convention, we find it a very useful way to add
the necessary context to say that we want to do
things differently. We want to move from a traditional
means of education to an environment where kids
are empowered and given agency in their learning.
We want to create a culture where we are preparing
students to be successful for life.
We are fortunate to be partnering wit
n our efforts. He currently serves as the
Director of Innovation for
n Iowa. He also is the Founding
Director of the
the nation’s only academic center dedicated to the
technology needs of school administrators. Scott will
join us for seven full-day sessions this school year,
and our team will then follow up with a two-hour
session in the weeks between full-day sessions.
Together, Scott and our senior leaders will facilitate
the conversations about what should change in
education and how we as a district can move to an
environment where student ownership is actualized
(Continued on page 9)
Dr. Arthur Fessler,
superintendent at
Community
Consolidated
School District 59 in
Arlington Heights
21st Century Leadership Academy aims
to transform educators … and education
