Dates: July 12-14, 2011
With two 3.75 hr after school Follow-up Dates in the Fall TBD

Location: LAPDA Meeting Space Montpelier, VT
Time: 8:30 -4:00

Cost: $450 for members, $550 for nonmembers
Additional $204 for 2 credits from Union Institute
http://www.lapdavt.org

This is the leader’s dilemma. On the one hand, failing to act when the environment around you is radically changing leads to extinction. On the other hand, making decisions under conditions of mind-racing mania can be equally fatal.
(Michael Fullan, Leading in a Culture of Change)

This strand of the Principal Toolkit is open to aspiring principals, new principals, and veterans alike. It is also relevant to teacher-leaders and high school leadership teams.

Down Load the Syllabus here

Course Description:

The course is flexible and will be adapted according to enrollment. It can be taken as a workshop, or, for graduate credit. Participants in this strand will learn about:
• Contemporary high school leadership: past, present, and the race (somewhere) into the future;
• Confronting ‘change’---or---‘How I learned to navigate the treacherous shoals of chaos and remain, reasonably, sane’;
• The 3Cs: Communication, Collaboration, and Collegiality---Aren’t they all the same?;
• Operational Nuts & Bolts---the 2-faced Janus, double-trouble danger of management;
• It’s About Learning: The Holy Grail of curriculum, assessment, and instruction.
This strand is designed to be active; participants will engage with the complex, difficult, and altogether absorbing issues of high school leadership through simulation, case study, scenario, debate, video clip analysis, and interactive---and hopefully provocative---lecture. While resources in best practice will be evident throughout the workshop, practical experience and materials from the instructor’s nearly 30-year career in high schools will be shared with participants. Each participant will select a project to implement in the fall and bring back to the follow-up session.

About the Instructor

Following undergraduate work at Boston College in history, and graduate programs in history teaching, curriculum & instruction, and educational leadership at Bridgewater State College (a Horace Mann ‘Normal’ school) and St. Michael’s College, I have spent the last 28 years working in three high schools and one technical center in two states. I have worked in large schools with diverse socio-economic demography, and I currently work in a small, high-performing/high expectations high school.
I have served as a teacher, teacher-leader, enrichment coordinator, director of curriculum, instruction, and assessment, and building principal. In addition, I have had the privilege to serve numerous professional committees, boards, and organizations at various organizational levels. I have conducted trainings and workshops in critical thinking, evaluation, and systemic school reform. Travels to India, South Korea and a dozen European countries on educational missions have provided me with perspective. I look forward to our work together.