Leadership Preparation Program

Foreword <Making Leadership Happen> FOREWORD

In a conference room at a rural Georgia retreat, casually dressed principals, assistant principals, central office administrators, teachers, superintendents, board members and school supporters face each other in a large circle. They come from different communities, different states, different backgrounds. They know each other only from the training sessions they have been attending together. Today as they sit down to sip their morning coffee, hard issues slap them in the face.

Is it our job as educators to teach students to fit into a mold? To be conformists? Should we teach them to be thinkers? Are we then teaching them to be rebels? Is there a clash between your sense of what you think you should teach and what society says you should teach? In looking to the legacy of Martin Luther King, is there a difference in human prejudices? Have they diminished? Gone in different directions? Are they still with us? Do you see prejudice in your schools?
Well?

     These school leaders are participating in “Leaders of Humanity,” a seminar that has been widely used in the corporate sector to develop leaders’ awareness of the importance of integrity. They are being asked, cajoled, even shamed a little into opening their minds and souls to each other on topics they might never discuss with anyone other than their closest friends. Seminar leader Zygmunt Nagorski, president of the Center for International Leadership in Washington DC, is raising these questions—and many others just as pointed—based on readings the participants were assigned in advance. The participants, however, aren’t quite prepared for this examination of their values and the impact of those values upon their leadership styles.

     Energy grows. Tension rises. Tempers flare. Honesty prevails.

     “It’s easier to teach conformity because that’s how we grew up.”

     “We should teach thinkers who can learn to rebel within the system.”

     “I don’t believe we’ve made progress in race relations. Racism is as bad as ever in schools.”

     “No, it isn’t. Young people are more tolerant today.”

     “How can you say that? Older children start self-segregating in about the eighth grade. Everything is either a white thing or it is a black thing.”

     “This discussion makes me uncomfortable.”

     Hands twitch. Eyes dart toward the door. Is there a way to escape confronting these issues? To return to the comfort of the daily school routine? Is it really important to share personal feelings on these sensitive subjects in the process of learning how to be better leaders?

     It is, according to school leaders who are participating in the Southern Regional Education Board’s Leadership Academy. Under the direction of veteran educator Alton C. Crews, The Leadership Academy is bringing Southern school leaders together to participate in a demonstration project that offers a fresh approach to the development of educational leaders based largely on corporate leadership training philosophies.

     “Public schools will not be turned around until those who lead them view schools and their roles from a different frame of reference,” Crews says. “We must have risk-taking, change-agent school administrators who can lead communities to adopt better ways to deliver educational services to children.”

     With primary support from NationsBank, SREB established the Leadership Academy in 1990 to demonstrate that structured leadership training can help turn public school systems around by improving leadership skills and attitudes, and by preparing local school leaders to be held accountable for school improvement. But to have tangible consequences, this training must be structured according to the setting of important educational goals and continuous effort to reach them.

     “The behaviors, attitudes, values, and skills of those who lead schools must change for schools to improve,” Crews says.

     The objective of the Southern Regional Education Board’s project is to produce a prototype leadership development program that can be disseminated to its member states, offering them the opportunity to incorporate all or part of the program into their current leadership development activities. In Georgia, 13 school systems are already participating in an adaptation of the program supported by the Woodruff Foundation.

     As a means of developing its program, SREB used a competitive application process to select 12 school systems from the 15 SREB states for the prototype Academy. A class of four school systems was chosen to begin the program in 1992, 1993 and 1995. The systems sent five-member teams to work together and attend a series of three-day training programs each year over a period of four years. Each school district works to achieve a set of goals over a period of five years.

     Through the Leadership Academy, school leaders are exposed to innovative and exciting ideas, philosophies, programs, processes, and people. They interact with other school leaders from all parts of the region who are facing similar challenges and issues as they work with respected national education and business consultants.

     Unlike any leadership development program currently available in the SREB states, the SREB Leadership Academy takes a comprehensive, integrated approach that is long-term, team-oriented, and relies upon specific strategies aimed at developing the individual and the community, as well as the school district. SREB’s practical method employs four separate but interdependent strategies:

• Goal-setting linked with interactive training seminars;

• Building a personal plan of professional improvement;

• Non-judgmental coaching and mentoring;

• Community collaboration and partnership building.

Next—STRATEGY I: Teams Working on Real-World Goals