Leadership Matters January 2014

21st Century Leadership Academy aims to transform educators … and education

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-

Dr. Arthur Fessler, superintendent at Community Consolidated School District 59 in Arlington Heights

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. In Project RED’s study of 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 with Scott McLeod in our efforts. He currently serves as the Director of Innovation for Prairie Lakes Area Education Agency in Iowa. He also is the Founding Director of the UCEA Center for the Advanced Study of Technology Leadership in Education (CASTLE), 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

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