When thinking about leadership in education, I look at scaffolding learning that creates a pathway to systems of excellence*. Educational Leaders titles or roles can be daunting. Often we don’t have shared understanding of the meaning of Coaching, Consulting, Collaborating, or Mentoring. The keynote attached is the core of the presentation, and resulting work of the team of 10 leaders at ADE Academy 2024 in Montebello Quebec.
Some highlights of expertise coming from the group during the presentation include the following thoughts:
When examining scenarios, consider the:
1. context,
2. person’s capacity and,
3. situation influences (out of school, in school, personal)
When opening questions in conversations some additional questions you can consider are:
1. Where are you on your journey?
2. Where do you want to be?
The wrap up of the deep conversations during the presentation, these scaffolds relate to Relationship(Trust and Transparency), Understanding the Context, and approaching with Curious Questions
Lastly, there were two extensions from the session that I will look at exploring further myself.
- An conversation that started in the presentation and I will look to continue exploring includes navigating the capacity of the leader. It is easy for the leader in one of these roles to be overwhelmed and overworked. So the questions leads to how do we prepare and protect the leaders in these roles.
- A second extension is looking at the roles and responsibilities of the participants of being coached, consulted, collaborated with, or mentored. What is their agency in the relationship?
*A shout out to Chad Mowbray who put the words to my thinking of ‘Moving from pockets of innovation to Systems of Innovation.’
Attach up to 5 files which will be available for other members to download.