Connecting Successful Practices to Next Practices

and the Role of Empowerment

Raymond J. McNulty, President

International Center for Leadership in Education

Crossing the Finish Line : Success for All Students

Phoenix, AZ

The Boston Globe

Ray, reading the paper on your “Kindle” just isn’t the same!

Almost everyone wants schools to be better,

but almost no one wants them to be different.

Teacher – Student Comparisons

T – I make learning exciting for my students.

86%

S – My teachers make learning fun.

41%

Teacher – Student Comparisons

T – I am aware of my students’ interests outside of school.

84%

S – My teachers know my interests outside of school.

28%

We have been the OBJECTS of change for

an extended period of time now.

WE need to become the AGENTS of change.

Stop waiting for the cure … EDUCATORS -YOU ARE THE CURE!!!

“The future is not some place we are going to, but one we (you) arecreating. The paths are not found,

but made, and the activity of making them, changes both the

maker and the destination.”--John Schaar

So what’s stopping us?How do we get ahead?

THEMES

• The Challenge We Face

• Best Practices, Next Practices and Innovation

• Empowerment

• Closing Thoughts

THEME

• The Challenge We Face

Schools are Improving

School Improvement

Schools are Improving

School Improvement

Changing World

What got us to where we are today in education,

will not get us to where we need to be!

In many cases, our efforts to transform education look

much like the original system.

Why is it so hard to change?

• The more successful a system is, the more difficult it is to recognize when it must change. By example, market leaders are the last ones to transform.

• The American Education System, “The market leader during the industrial era!”

Market Leader Thinking

• Dominant logic: “That’s the way we do things here.”

We need to stop looking at threats and opportunities that we face through our dominant logic!

In the years ahead the forgetting curve may be more important

than the learning curve!

C.K. Prahalad

It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.

HAVE WE ADAPTED?

Mental Locks

• We don’t need to be creative for most of what we do (driving, shopping, business of living). So staying on routine thought paths enables us to do many things without having to think about it.

• Our training in school life has taught us that there is one right answer.

• The Right Answer

The Second Right Answer

• What is the answer?

• What are the answers?

• What is the meaning of this?

• What are the meanings?

• What is the result?

• What are the results?

• The Right Answer

• That’s not logical

• SOFT • HARD

• Logic• Metaphor• Dream• Reason• Precision• Humor• Consistency• Ambiguity• Play• Work• Exact• Approximate

• Direct• Focused• Fantasy• Reality• Paradox• Diffuse• Analysis• Hunch• Generalization• Specifics• Child• Adult

• SOFT• Metaphor• Dream• Humor• Ambiguity• Play• Approximate• Fantasy• Paradox• Diffuse• Hunch• Generalization• Child

• HARD• Logic• Reason• Precision• Consistency• Work• Exact• Reality• Direct• Focused• Analysis• Specific• Adult

• SOFT

• Shades of gray

• Hard to pick up

• Many answers

• Flood light, diffused

• HARD

• Black and white

• Easy to pick up

• Right answer

• Focused like a spot light

Cat - Refrigerator

• The Right Answer

• That’s not logical

• Follow the rules

• Be practical

THEME

• Best Practices, Next Practices and Innovation

AYP

Research Based Successful PracticesTight Tight

Critical PointRemain Tight TightEmpowerTight Loose

Best Practices to

Next Practices

Best practices allow you to do what you are currently doing

a little better,

while next practices increase your organization’s capability to do things that it has never done

before.

Best Practices

• Research Based

• Imitation

• Copy

• Replication

• Successful Practices Network

• 70 - 30

Best Practices

• Read 180

• I Can Learn

• Learning Together

NEXT PRACTICES

Best practices allow you to do what you are currently doing

a little better,

while next practices increase your organization’s capability to do things that it has never

done before.

The Learning Criteria to Support 21st Century Learners ©

College and Career Readiness Defined

• Cognitive strategies: Intellectual openness; inquisitiveness; analysis; interpretation; precision and accuracy; problem solving; and reasoning, argumentation, and proof.

• Content knowledge: Understanding the structures and large organizing concepts of the academic disciplines, resting upon strong research and writing abilities.

• Academic behaviors: Self-management, time management, strategic study skills, accurate perceptions of one’s true performance, persistence, ability to utilize study groups, self-awareness, self-control, and intentionality.

• Contextual skills and knowledge: Facility with application and financial-aid processes and the ability to acculturate to college.

David Conley

Next Practices

• Penn Foster

• Princeton Review

• Expert Space

• Expert 21

More Next Practices

Lexile Level:Lexile Level:600-800600-800

Lexile Level:Lexile Level:800-1000800-1000

Lexile Level:Lexile Level:1000-12001000-1200

Expertise can sometimes be a road block to problem solving and

the development of Next Practices.

Experts see their points as critical to resolution, without sometimes

valuing the thinking of others.

-Shurnyu Suzuki

“In the beginner’s mind there are many

possibilities; in the expert’s mind there are few.”

System Innovation

Sustaining Innovation

Next Practice

Disruptive Innovation

Marshmallow Challenge

NEXT PRACTICE THINKING

• The Iterative Process

• Versions

• Create a disciplined, managed space for development of new ways to accomplish difficult tasks

THEME

• Empowerment

Successful leadership is only self- maintaining in a system through the empowerment of everyone,

creating leadership density.

Sustainability is about the relationship between people, their purpose and their place.

Developing teachers’ and students’ capacities to lead

is clearly important in a system.

“Empowerment” is a soft word,can you measure it?

Why good spreadsheets make bad strategies.

We live in a world obsessed with science, predictability and control.

If we can’t measure it, it doesn’t count!

Sales

We must consider the possibility that if we can’t measure

something, it might be the very most important thing!

New Orleans Saints

CULTURE DRIVES STRATEGY

What does empowerment look like at the highest levels?

Talking with kids…

It’s not us against them!

69

Empowering the students

Day of Pink: A day to stand against bullying, harassment, and discrimination

Period 1 Day of Pink is a day of action, born when a youth in a high school in Cambridge, Nova Scotia, was bullied because he wore a pink shirt to school.

His fellow students decided to stand up to bullying; and hundreds of students came to

school wearing pink to show support for diversity and stopping discrimination.

What do you feel makes you different or unique?

Have you ever felt this puts you at risk for being bullied or harassed?

CULTURE DRIVES STRATEGY

Daniel Pink

• Autonomy

• Mastery

• Purpose

THEME

• Closing Thoughts

THEMES

• The Challenge We Face

• Best Practices, Next Practices and Innovation

• Empowerment

The system is not to blame, we are, for not adapting it to our ever

changing world.

I can’t imagine anything worse than looking back at the opportunity before us in

education and thinking we blew it!

Connecting Successful Practices to Next Practices

and the Role of Empowerment

Raymond J. McNulty, President

International Center for Leadership in Education

Crossing the Finish Line : Success for All Students

Phoenix, AZ