Cognitive Coaching Workshop

I just finished the first four days of a fantastic cognitive coaching workshop. I've wanted to attend training for a number of years, but each time I had the opportunity to get the training, my schedule would preclude my participation. So, when this opportunity came up I thought it would be a great help in writing our grant. I can see many many applications of this new learning for my work.

There are four more days of training in the fall semester, and while I'm very much on overload now from these past four days, I sure wish I had that problem-solving map under my belt. If you get the chance to participate in a Cognitive Coaching workshop, DO IT !!!

Thank you Chrysann and Paula for making attending this workshop possible for me. It was such a gift!

Comic Strips

I just finished creating a PIXTON comic strip

UCEA Wallace Leveraging Change Initiative

I'm in Austin Texas for a couple of days working with participants from seven other Educational Leadership programs on the UCEA-Wallace Leveraging Change Initiative. Our teams were selected because we have participated in accomplishing change at our own universities. Now we are collaborating on a book project to share with other Deans and Educational Leadership Faculty to assist in future change projects in other leadership programs around the county. So far, the highlight of Monday (beyond working with my colleagues on this team) was an adobe connect presentation by Scott McLeod (and here's a short bio on Scott).

Scott McLeod, J.D., Ph.D., is an Associate Professor and Coordinator of the Educational Administration program at Iowa State University. He also is the Director of the UCEA Center for the Advanced Study of Technology Leadership in Education (CASTLE), the nation's only center dedicated to the technology needs of school administrators, and was a co-creator of the wildly popular video, Did You Know? (Shift Happens). Dr. McLeod blogs regularly about technology leadership issues at dangerouslyirrelevant.org.

The presentation was inspiring -- a kind of move the earth presentation -- with a kind of wake up call for educational organizations to "get with it." I've checked out Scott's online presence and am very impressed. I'm also following him on Twitter. While I am pleased to be twittering and tweeting, to be working on Pecha Kucha presentations (20 slides, 20 seconds for a 6 minute 40 second presentation), to be blogging, to be working with my faculty on an online principal licensure program, to be learning about voice threads ... I should be doing more. Thanks Scott. You've opened my eyes to a new way of working. So the change leveraging project is already underway -- with me. I'm putting on my seat belt. Want to come along for the ride?

Collecting Threads for Weaving a Grant

Last fall, two colleagues and I were working on an IES grant. Time was short but we were determined. Anything was possible. After all, we had plotted our our professional development model, and we had the content ready for delivery. But when I met with the head of our research center, she asked me about our needs assessment. We hadn't thought of a needs assessment.

After all, we thought we had the answer. We thought we knew what these principals would need. We had a bibliography packed full of helpful literature. We had experience in working with and coaching principals. We knew this was going to work. All we needed was the grant money and we were going to do great things.

A needs assessment. Of course. It made perfect sense. Most of the research on large-scale coaching efforts suffered from not having done an adequate or any needs assessment at all. I had a sinking feeling that we would not meet the grant deadline. Our logic model begged for a needs assessment component and not having that needs assessment would set us back. We didn't have enough days left. And since the goal of writing a grant is to actually get the grant funded (not just write the grant and submit it) we decide to wait until the next submission date. It was a good decision.

I am going to take the lead on writing the 25 pages of this proposal. I'm very excited about this work ... and so are my colleagues. We think that coaching is THE THING. And tomorrow we'll start weaving these loose threads into a fabulous grant proposal.

A Wordle for My Blog

I created this wordle for my blog.

Getting Started ... My Blog Launch

Today my colleague, Joni Dunlap, showed our doctoral faculty how to set up a blog. I was impressed with what she had done with her blog and wanted to try this tool for working on my research topic of leading with a coaching mindset. I've written a grant to help me with the work of synthesizing the literature on leadership and coaching by using Cultural Historical Activity Theory as the analytic framework. This blog will help me organize this work and capture my thoughts about this process. Thanks Joni -- my blog is launched!