PROFILES LEARNING TO WORK TOGETHER      Five years ago, Marijo Pitts-Sheffield didn’t know a single name at the local health department or family and children’s services agency. Today, her Glynn County, Georgia, district is working jointly with several agencies to provide a range of services for preschool children and their families.      At about the time that Glynn County was chosen for the Leadership Academy, Georgia began funding pre-kindergarten programs for schools and for home instruction. Both initiatives required cooperation among agencies. Glynn County took advantage of the training on learning to work together provided through the Leadership Academy. “That’s how we began looking at how we were going to pull everybody together,” says Pitts-Sheffield, who is both the early childhood and the Partners in Education director in her district.      The district began with a pre-kindergarten coordinating council of more than 40 people from such agencies as mental health, family and children services, housing and Social Security. The council also included representatives from the Georgia Extension Service, the local hospital (a major employer), private pre-kindergarten centers, the local college and the Chamber of Commerce.      “That was another piece that SREB helped us understand that we needed—to have the business population behind us.”      Pitts-Sheffield says the group recently realized it was spending too much time meeting and setting up committees, and it began looking into ways to change this. “We did not have just the worker bees from these agencies. We had the CEO or director, the decision-makers—and we found that was important—but their time is limited.”      The group applied for a planning grant from a private organization called the Family Connection. “We decided to use that as a tool to look at what we were doing to see if we could kick it up to the next level of collaboration, where you’re actually sharing funds.”      The group received the grant and hired an executive director and a University of Georgia consultant specializing in organizational conflict management. The task of these employees is to set up a system that will allow families and children to access all the cooperating services from one office, Pitts-Sheffield says.      “The whole idea is that instead of a family being bombarded with a case worker from each agency, there would be one point of entry into the system. There would be a case manager who would coordinate those services so the family wouldn’t have so many different people knocking at its door.”      “If we’re really cooperating, and if the case workers are comparable in skills and competencies, there should be a level of trust such that if one agency’s person is working with a family, the other agencies can trust that person’s abilities and judgments. That’s pretty futuristic.” A UNIFYING FORCE      Julia Symmonds, president of the school board in Temple, Texas, believes the SREB Leadership Academy has mobilized her team to carry a unified message to her district and get things done to help students.      “The most important part has been the building of the team,” Symmonds says. “We go to the Leadership Academy sessions and get away from the district. We get away from the distractions. We learn. Our conversation doesn’t stop when the seminar stops. It carries on into dinner. It carries on into the evening, and on the plane trip going back.”      The energy continues to grow after the team returns home, she says. AN INVALUABLE RESOURCE      Bill Anderson is a veteran school leader whose more than 30 years as a superintendent took him through just about every crisis any school leader can face. His experience, long-term perspective and objective approach have made him a valuable peer coach and mentor to three Leadership Academy teams.      It takes time, Anderson says, for a coach to build the trust necessary for the team to confide in him. He does not rush the process.      “For a coach to have any effect, the person has to be accepted as someone who is open and honest and will not attempt to interject his or her own feelings over theirs. The coach has to be a resource person. Otherwise nothing happens—like putting your finger in a glass of water then taking it out, and everything goes back to being just the way it was.”      Anderson, like all peer coaches, holds meetings with his team in its district twice each year. He meets for one day with the team as a whole and then meets separately with individual team members. In individual meetings, Anderson discusses the participants’ personal plans of improvement.      “I talk to members about their reflective journal entries to see if there is any common thread in the things they’ve picked out as being critical issues that they’ve dealt with. We determine if any of those issues relate to their individual action plan for growth and development. They discuss their private and professional areas of concern, whether it’s matters of health or other things. It gives them a non-threatening, receptive ear, which in these times sometimes is hard to find.”      The one-on-one meetings include the participant’s suggestions for achieving the team’s goals and an assessment of how the team is functioning. “I have them do that individually rather than collectively because there might be something that they are hesitant to share with the others regarding the team’s work,” he says.      During the team meeting, the discussion focuses on the district’s goals. “As a team, we will review the roles and responsibilities that they last agreed upon, asking if those are still appropriate or if the role the team takes toward meeting these goals should be revised. It’s all an effort to cause them to progress as individuals and as a team toward the accomplishment of those SREB goals. I function as a resource person to help them keep on track.” FINDING THE LEADER WITHIN      At first, Brenda Gentry, instructional generalist from Winston-Salem/Forsyth County, North Carolina, was reluctant to participate in the Leadership Academy. She thought it was a great idea, but she was new in her position and had many other obligations.      “The first time I went [to a Leadership Academy session], I was not good company for anybody. But being able to meet with so many different people from around the South and sharing the same types of issues and problems—that was real powerful. ”      Gentry was captivated. “The presenters and much of the philosophy of leadership—even though I had been to graduate school and had some administrative training—was all new to me. I was the greenhorn and really excited about everything.”      Through the leadership style assessment, Gentry learned that others perceived her to be a leader. “I never saw myself as being a leader. Or I never saw what I did as involving any kind of leadership skills, until I started with the SREB Academy.” She says the leadership assessment “really got me in touch with my leadership style and how other people perceived me. I got to see a different side of me.”      She has become conscious of her leadership style and has learned how to change and adapt it as needed. “Before, I would just make a decision or say something, or I wouldn’t make a decision. I didn’t think that I was employing any particular style or that I was using avoidance or being overbearing. I never thought about any of that, but having gone through the assessment, I’m always reminded if I’m doing that.”      Gentry says she would not have had the opportunity to develop her leadership skills if she had not attended the SREB Leadership Academy.      “I found my leadership style. I didn’t know I had one. And I think that I’ve tried to fine-tune some things. I would attribute all of this awareness to my participation in the SREB Leadership Academy. I never would have decided to look inward.” Next—Appendix 1: Program Evaluation