Leadership is difficult. Leadership and change are even more difficult. Being new to leadership in a new building requiring change is most difficult... Start with a cage containing five monkeys. Inside the cage, hang a banana on a string and place a set of stairs under it. Before long, a monkey will go to the stairs and start to climb towards the ...

I just recently finished my first semester as the Director of Curriculum and Personnel in the Union R-XI School District in St. Louis, Missouri. The transition from a building level administrator to a central office administrator has proven to be quite the learning experience. The last several years have been huge in terms of my professional ...

Leadership is the key to reaching & moving beyond your tipping point. Every single day we all get the opportunity to lead and push ourselves closer to the ''tipping point.'' We lead with our colleagues right alongside our students, and we approach each day and each opportunity with a sense of opportunity and possibility... ''If your actions ...

I recently just finished reading ''The Way of the Shepherd'' by Kevin Leman and Bill Pentak. If you are in a leadership position of any kind, I would highly recommend reading this book. I even would recommend reading this book if you aren't in a leadership position because it outlines and discusses principles that are relevant for anyone. Here are ...

As part of my new position as the Director of Curriculum, I have been spending the last few weeks trying to gather information and resources to strengthen my knowledge of the ever looming and inevitable Common Core transition. Though I do not claim to be an expert of the Common Core, I do believe I have established a good foundation and ...

I just started reading ''District Leadership That Works: Striking the Right Balance'' by Robert Marzano and Timothy Waters. I'm hoping that as I transition into a central office position this book will provide a better understanding of how they operate and ways they can operate more effectively. The book outlines five specific actions in which all ...

I was recently part of a discussion surrounding ''professionalism'' in a leadership capacity via Sam Fancera. In this particular situation, ''professionalism'' was defined as providing teachers with as much autonomy and freedom as possible while still following district policy, regulations and mandates. The question of professionalism came into ...

For the last two days I had the opportunity to attend a Pearson's conference in Baltimore. Regardless of your opinion of Pearson and the role they play in education, they put on a pretty nice conference. Though I was not in the market to purchase any of their products, they did offer several sessions with great speakers and presentations. In ...

A couple weeks ago, @stumpteacher wrote a great blog post titled, ''Do we need principals?'' This question obviously stirred up quite a conversation not only through twitter discussions, but also through comments on blogs. There were even blog posts written in response to Josh's question like this one by @jmarkeyAP who vehemently claims, YES, we ...

If you work within an organization of any type, you most likely work with a wide array and variety of people. The colleagues with whom you work bring a ton of different experiences and unique thoughts to the table. These experiences and thoughts ultimately drive their approach and response to occurrences that happen on a daily basis at the work ...