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As a principal, you know how challenging it is to build a dedicated staff, encourage parental support, help students get excited about learning, and create a working school culture. You know that it takes a more than a few years (and surviving a few school events gone awry) to gain the trust of staff, students, and community. And you probably think that once these elements are in place, you'll be able to relax and let your school run like a well-oiled machine, right? Wrong. Even the most successful principals can become stuck in tired routines that inhibit collaboration and shut down opportunities for learning and change. In Principals Who Learn: Asking the Right Questions, Seeking the Best Solutions, former principals Barbara Kohm and Beverly Nance encourage principals to step out of their comfort zone and pursue learning with their staff. Kohm and Nance give principals the tools to shift from being top-down, authoritarian leaders to becoming open collaborators and continual learners. The authors show principals how to Learn to listen to all voices. Turn bad guys into allies. Develop an open and collaborative culture. Redesign staff meetings for more effectiveness. Resolve conflicts and solve problems. Turn mistakes into learning opportunities. Engaging scenarios and reflection questions further help principals re-examine their leadership practices and look at their school from new vantage points. Whether you are a new principal seeking guidance or a seasoned veteran looking to make a change, Principals Who Learn will reinvigorate your work and help you develop and adapt your skills to meet the ever-changing needs of your school. Barbara Kohm worked for 14 years as an elementary school principal and for 10 years as an early childhood program director. She now works as a consultant to principals in a variety of school districts. Beverly Nance worked as a high school assistant principal and a middle school principal. She is now the co-director of the St. Louis Principals Academy and a leadership consultant and mentor for principals in a variety of school districts.
Principals Who Learn Barbara Kohm Beverly Nance Asking the Right Questions, Seeking the Best Solutions Kohm • Nance Principals Learn WHO Principals Learn WHO A s a principal, you know how challenging it is to build a dedicated staff, encourage parental support, help students get excited about learning, and create a working school culture. You know that it takes more than a few years (and surviving a few school events gone awry) to gain the trust of staff, students, and community. And you probably think that once these elements are in place, you’ll be able to relax and let your school run like a well-oiled machine, right? Wrong. Even the most successful principals can become stuck in tired routines that inhibit collaboration and shut down opportunities for learning and change. In Principals Who Learn: Asking the Right Questions, Seeking the Best Solutions, former principals Barbara Kohm and Beverly Nance encourage principals to step out of their comfort zone and pursue learning with their staff. Kohm and Nance give principals the tools to shift from being top-down, authoritarian leaders to becoming open collaborators and continual learners. The authors show principals how to • Learn to listen to all voices. • Turn “bad guys” into allies. • Develop an open and collaborative culture. • Redesign staff meetings for more effectiveness. • Resolve conflicts and solve problems. • Turn mistakes into learning opportunities. Engaging scenarios and reflection questions further help principals re-examine their leadership practices and look at their school from new vantage points. Whether you are a new principal seeking guidance or a seasoned veteran looking to make a change, Principals Who Learn will reinvigorate your work and help you develop and adapt your skills to meet the ever-changing needs of your school. Barbara Kohm worked for 14 years as an elementary school principal and for 10 years as an early childhood program director. She now works as a consultant to principals in a variety of school districts. Beverly Nance worked as a high school assistant principal and a middle school principal. She is now the co-director of the St. Louis Principals Academy and a leadership consultant and mentor for principals in a variety of school districts. Education BROWSE EXCERPTS FROM ASCD BOOKS: http://www.ascd.org/books Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development Alexandria, Virginia USA $29.95 U.S. ebooksdownloadrace.blogspot.in [...]... understand the thinking of all staff members The second theme, seeing possibilities, allows us to take what we hear from all these voices and create new ideas and new solutions We learn to appreciate the role of risk in school reform, to find the hidden opportunities in mistakes, and to value the tension inherent in change The third theme, asking the right questions, moves us from experts to learners... with each other over the next few days about how enjoyable the event might be The next week I suggested the idea again, only to hear the same people negate it This time, however, there were a few faculty members actually advocating for the event The conversation soon became a debate of who was right and who was wrong That was not the climate I wanted for our first faculty social event I tabled the conversation... trip to take Another wanted me to tell her how to settle a personal conflict with a colleague What I wanted them to do was recognize their own strengths and Kohm-PrincipalsWhoLearn pages.inx x 5/9/2007 12:14:13 PM Introduction xi knowledge They were not only expected to make those decisions, but in most cases, they were the best ones to make them Fred Kofman, consultant and researcher on the design and... engage other people in this thinking process Our hope is that our readers will find the connections between theory and everyday practice in real schools as useful as we did Kohm-PrincipalsWhoLearn pages.inxv xv 5/9/2007 12:14:14 PM Kohm-PrincipalsWhoLearn pages.inxvi xvi 5/9/2007 12:14:14 PM PART 1 Listening to All Voices People who seem peripheral to your goals now may be central to them in the future... organizational learning systems, mesmerized the conference audience when talking about learning organizations, reminding us that the “whole is greater than the sum of its parts.” Another statement from his remarks that has given me continued inspiration was, “Rediscovering our innate ability to see the ‘whole’ can lead to a personal transformation and the building of organizations with the capacity to create their... everyone in the group can support the decision; they don’t all have to think it’s the best decision, but they all agree they can live with it Using Fist-to-Five in response to a proposal allows everyone to see how much support there is for the proposal, as well as any strong opposition This tool is an easy-to-use way to build consensus among diverse groups The Fist-to-Five Process In the first step in the. .. the decision Group members who show one or two fingers indicate that they still have questions and concerns that must be addressed before a final decision is made They should be given the opportunity to state their objections, and the proposal should be opened for more discussion If there are any fists held up, the issue is revisited and perhaps temporarily tabled No decision is Kohm-PrincipalsWhoLearn... was built into the school day for whole-school assemblies, grade-level meetings, and writing assignments regarding the importance of integrity Character education was an area that easily demonstrated the power of the whole being greater than the sum of the parts.” Among other positive outcomes, even office referrals and noise in the halls decreased Such hope and possibilities gave me the energy to... resulted in important changes in the way we related to one another, our students, and their parents We found these leverage points clustered around four general themes We have organized the book around these themes The first theme, listening to all voices, points to the power and importance of including all perspectives in an organization We examine the shifts in thinking that led us to develop personal skills... After the meeting finished, a few senior faculty members took me aside to offer some advice Judy said, “Bev, there are some people on staff who will always vote ‘No.’ If you wait for a unanimous vote on this decision or any others, we will never move forward The majority of the staff wants to go Make the event voluntary and see who signs up!” I put the idea for a staff dinner on the TLC agenda again the . Principals Who Learn Barbara Kohm Beverly Nance Asking the Right Questions, Seeking the Best Solutions Kohm • Nance Principals Learn WHO Principals Learn WHO A. change. In Principals Who Learn: Asking the Right Questions, Seeking the Best Solutions, former principals Barbara Kohm and Beverly Nance encourage principals