(At the risk of seeming overly flattering and favoring a friend, for which I offer full disclosure and my apologies, I share the following post about an outstanding educational leader.)
Last week in Virginia, speaking to the Commonwealth’s fine independent school heads, I suggested they had a great model of educational leadership in their home state, Albemarle County Superintendent Pam Moran. I was asked, entirely reasonably, why I described her this way, and, caught off guard, I stuttered a bit in my answer, and disappointed myself in not providing a fuller explanation.
Curiously, that very same day, only a few hours later, I turned to chapter 7 of the book I was reading on my airplane home, a chapter devoted to the leadership qualities of the none other than Pam Moran. In his book, Insights into Action: Successful School Leaders Share What Works, author and former school principal Bill Sterrett writes “Moran and other tech savvy leaders believe it vital to help our students and staffs use technology effectively– not for technology’s sake but for learning’s sake.”
Drawing upon that book and other sources, including a recent issue of the New Yorker, I now aim to better answer the question: what makes Pam Moran such a fine educational leader? She offers, I think, excellent exemplification of what in my presentation last week I explained are the 8 Steps of Leading Learning Forward.
- Developing Ourselves as Leading Learners
- Articulating the Vision and Modeling Digital Citizenship
- Collaboratively determining our intended learning outcomes
- Measuring what matters most, using technology.
- Strengthening our faculty professional learning cultures
- Promoting Aligned Teaching & Learning
- Putting in place the necessary tools
- Documenting & Sharing.
Step One: Developing Ourselves as Leading Learners
Sterrett’s chapter on Moran opens with an epigraph from her, which by its placement and its emphasis conveys that she too believes that leading learning begins always with a focus upon our own learning.
I’m convinced that we administrative leaders have an obligation to initiate new learning [and] become skillful in the use of tools that accelerate and advance our learning work.
Sterrett goes on to write that
She believes the onus is on the educational leader…to be aware of new technologies. ”I know that if I can’t stay current than I will not be able to get my colleagues to do the same.”
Social media is also, for Moran, a vehicle for reflection and intellectual growth.
Moran finds that contributing to blogs is a good way to reflect on her practice. By articulating her thoughts in posts that draw on her experiences and refer to her vision, she is able to model the importance of reflection and meaningful conversation for the greater professional community…. “The ‘hurried child’ has become the ‘hurried adult’– I fear– to the detriment of deep learning.
Step Two Articulating the Vision and Modeling Digital Citizenship. Leadership always contains as a key element strong communication with all constituencies, and sharing a vision of the future toward which one is leading. Pam does so in many ways, including using powerful social media tools such as youtube, blogging and twitter.
One example can be seen in this compelling, snazzy, and effective video, articulating her district’s “continuing journey toward quality learning:”
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