Welcome to the Conversation

When you pose a question like this, you never know where the
discussion will lead. The advantage of being first is that I get to take the
first step in the journey. It is my hope that this conversation grows
organically and moves in directions that are important to all of us. The good
news for us all is that I am not alone! I count on Jack Grayson & Sheryl
Abshire to keep this discussion lively and challenging (as if I could stop
them!)

The Opening Round Begins

What we need is a conversation that does more than refine
the many lists of skills and attributes of 21st Century K-12
leaders. You can skip the next two paragraphs if you agree with the premise
that there are enough lists and what’s missing in educational leadership is a
culture of “practice what you preach” to replace its “do as I say, not as I do”
modus operandi.           

The Problem with Lists (John’s Opinion)

Among the cultural icons of the 20th Century, the
“List” stands out as quintessential to its later half. In the 1990’s
educational organizations looked forward to the 21st Century and
began to inventory the characteristics of those who would be “future ready.” In
the first ten years of the 21st century, the K-12 world has refined lists for students, teachers,
administrators,
CTOs,
superintendents
and just about everyone
else! What I am saying is that these lists are very 20th
Century. We need to move beyond Lists to embedding these attributes into
professional practice.

Lists also frustrate me, especially when I come up short. Is
it really true that I cannot be a 21st Century leader if I’m not so
good at, for instance, crafting effective policies? Is there no help for me or
can I supplement my skill deficits with the talents of others (effective
participation as a member of a team – a
21st Century skill.)

OK, enough of my list of shortcomings of Lists.

It’s More About Leadership Than Its Attributes

K-12 education could use a LOT more role models among our
leaders. While rarely will an education leader ask an assistant to print out
their email every morning, I recently watched a superintendent lead a
brainstorm session with district leaders using erasable markers on an inactive interactive whiteboard – and
then take a picture of it using a cell phone for later transcription!

So here’s an idea. Let’s begin this discussion with a
pledge:

Right hands up:

I, say your name, will
lead by example. I will be a 21st Century education leader and will
insist that my fellow leaders do the same.

Say AMEN?

(If you really want List of 21st
Century leader attributes, see the links above.) If you need help, get it.
If they need help, get it to them. (Remember, continuous learning is a
characteristic of a 21st Century Leader!)

TC, this one’s for you.

John–You made a friend when you said you had enough of lists.  Amen! 

For one thing, lists are most often a subsitutute for action–much much easier to create the list than to do something that would change yourself or change the K-12 system. When you make a list, the best thing might be to bury it in a hole, and dig it up, say, in 10-15 years to see how clairvoyant you were.  More likely, you’ll tear it up, and show it to no one for you’re very likely to be wrong.  But if you have a sense of humor, you’ll laugh at it, or if you were right (unlikely) brag about how smart you were, And then you’ll probably make another list and continue breeding lists for the rest of your life.  But you’ll be doing nothing to improve the n system.  Even if you KNEW, that is not the same as DO.  There’s a good book about thata called the llike policy makers, researchers, and gurus.  

I’m not sayng I don’t make lists at all.  I do.  But the purpose is not to be a fortune teller, but to help me think about in a concrete way what I want to do and how I’m going to do it.  The item or items I choose become vision (I’ve come to dislike that world because it is so overworked) goals, and right behind the vision becomes action plans–useing some version of Rudyard Kipling’s handmaidens: Why? What? How? Who? Where? Wnen?

In this Forum–my thanks to Cisco and Catherine—for including us,  I’ll tell you stories of things I did and still do when I have had only a faint idea it will work, but I know if I wish to help create a better future, I have to do SOMETHING.  Thanks John for kicking this off the way you did-you hit a hot button for me. Jack

I re-read my comment, and realized that I left out the name of the book I referred rto:  The Knnowing-Doing Gap, by Pfeffer and Sutton, published by the Harvard Business School.  The title says what it’s about. Business suffers that, but educatin does too.

And I noticed several typos–but be on notice that in my haste to say something I am often careless, and the keyboard can’t move fast enough for my mind.  And I don’t like going back, for I’m always looking ahead.

So, let me give one broad mea culpa, and forge ahead.  Jack

I want to take this oppotunity to inform and invite both of you–John and Sheryl–to what I think will be an important one-day event at APQC in Houston on Sept. 20.  

The title/subject matter is “Technological Collabroation for Learnng.” with us will be an estimated number of 30-40 educators, from large “Clark County” to small ones like Jenks. Oklahoma.  It’s a meeting that I created to learn myself what education may look like in the years ahead, and I got Cisco Systems to do it with us, for they are interested in the same thing.  They have demos, some of their executivs, and their guess as to the future of collaborative learning vis technology.

I know it’s a long travel for you, John, but you’d have a chance to see APQC and what we’re doing. Sheryl, it’s only a relativley short drive from Lake Charles. There is no fee charged, and it is somewht germane to our charter to look at 21st Century Skills ina digitial age., Jack

Round ll

John gave us the opening comments and I will attempt to keep the comments stimulating! I agree with John’s comments that no one needs any lists about what skill and attributes are needed for any jobs or roles and certainly not in the area of 21st century leadership. One could make the point that if you need a list of what is the essence of a 21st century leader…then perhaps you have quite a distance to travel to even see a glimpse of your goal. I think the real difficulty in this defining task is the age old question of what really is leadership?

I think in the 21st century and in every other century one of the key attributes is vision. Now this is more difficult than ever for those aspiring to be 21st century leaders, due in no small part to the fact that so many do not know what the 21st century is capable of. So many do not know what the future holds and what the needs and expectations are. Our educational system is in extreme chaos, in my mind and so many of our leaders are grappling with massive change and increased expectations with one foot in the past and one foot poised to crash into the 21st century.

If asked to drill down and focus on one key characteristic of a 21st century leader, then I would have to say VISION. And I am not talking about vision in the traditional sense. I am referring to a new type of vision….one that inspires and influences others to shed any doubts they may have and believe in a leader and their vision in such a way that they connect with the leader and change their beliefs. We must have leaders that have this type of rare vision in education today. Because, in my mind, we have a lot of influencing to do in order to truly transform education in such a way that it becomes relevant for every child, every day.

Most of the speculators about 21st Century skills make a list–such as “Problem Solving, Critical Thinking, Innovative Skills, Interpersonal skills, etc. etc..  So, for fun I listed all I have read about under the banner of “21st  Centry skills”, and came up with, and there were 36 items.  But that’s just the beginning of the problem of what to do as an educator?

First, how can we predict what the 21st Century will be like.  Suppose we had that exercise back in 1910 to come up with a list of the 20th Century Skills.  We were largely an agrarian society.  We hadn;t seen, norcouldl we anticipate what was coming.  In 1910 we had no automobiles, no air aconditioning, no computers, no TV, no Internet, and so on.  What do you think they would have put on their lists of 20th Cenury skills? And if you were an educastor then, how could you have selected the skillsl you need today?  You may think we are smarter now about the future, but I don’t think so. 

We can all make guesses, but so far few have been very accurate about the future  (and I belong to a future society for fun).  So given my belief that you can’t predict very well (if at all) the skills needed,, the problem remains regardless of your list items, HOW will we give them whatever skills you might put on a list? 

I personally dhn’t think you do it by creating classes called ”Sytems Thinkng” or “Creativity” or “interpersonal skills.” First of all, there are few curricula for most of these, nor standards to judge stiudemts.  and anyway, which of these would you teach?  Who judges which will be most needed?  Second, even if you feel you could “teach” them, how would the student “learn” them?  Most lists, beyond technology, history, science, are behavioiral and non-cognitive skills. And learnng is the needed outcome, not teaching. 

So what do we do?  I was faced with that problem back in 1968 when I becaome Dean of the SMU Business School.  I chose a revolutinary path, and will tell you more aobut it in later entries.

. 

Sheryl—you will certainly have no argument with me about the importance of Vision!  I don’t care what it is or what you call it (some say Mission), but a leader must make clear to everyone in words, and deeds his or her vision, and that everyone is expected to link (or align) whatever they are dong with that.

The problem I have in stopping there, is the oft missing “How” in education–how will you achieve it? And that ‘how’ is process management—a process that is mapped, measured, compared, analyzes, function-free, and focuses on the customer (stakeholder), and the vision. 

If that is missing, then the vision may or may not be accomplished

Without going into detail, APQC has created a major project called “The North Start” to execute the missing “how’’ process, and spread Process Management across the natiuon.  We have over 25 districts who have gone or are going through this methodology.  This is explained an a Case Study that Cisco wrote from our documents, If you are interested, Catherine can tell us how to access it.

John put his view early into the conversation (“kill all the lists!”), and you have added “Vision.”  I’m going to make my contribution from here on of what I nominate as the single most important 21st Century Skil of alll:  Learning How to Learn. 

And my comments that follow ino ther entries will tell you how I got there, and what I did in a college to test it and show what is required to make it work.  (Hint; It’s not a course).

Remember from the last comment—my goal is to do something to help students learn how to learn–my critical guess as to the most important skill for the 21st century. Keep that in mind as this story unfolds.

The story starts when I was recruited in late 1968 from the Deanship of the Tulane Business School to the bring the SMU Business School from about the last place in U.S. rankings of business schools to first place in 5 years.

The SMU professors were tired, old, tenured, and hostile to change.  The business school attracted the lowest level of students in the university. 

I don’t know if you remember the movie “Twelve O’Clock High’ with Gregory Peck?  It’s a great teaching tool.  He is assigned to take over a poorly performing airplane squadron going out daily to bomb Germany in WW II. He arrives and stands on a bluff overlooking the camp, and wonders what to do, and whether he can do it..  I was like that when I arrived at SMU, and it wsa a teaching institutin in the worst sense, and not a learning institution for faculty or students.

At first, I tried using the humanistic, logical, change management appeal– one-on-one coaching, speeches about excellence, and appeals for support.  No change. Then, I tried change management tools, like “Managerial Grid”, TQM, behavioral tools like sensitivity training.  No change.  And because of tenure I couldn’t fire them.

But about 30% of the faculty were receptive to change, so I built on that. I decided If I were to get transformative change, it had to be a revolution.  So I recruited faculty from Yale, Stanford, Harvard, Purdue—packed the court—and in a few months the internal supporters that joined in, and new outsiders combined to  51%–so by one vote–I got the Faculty Senate to agree to my very radical change.   

I’m not adding this as a diary of how good or smart I am.  Not at all.  But it was the only way I could start the process of heping students learn how to learn.  

I will tell you what I did in the next entry, and the link to 21st Century Skills

Since this is my last comment, I’ll tell you what I did at SMU to open up system for learning how to learn.

1. Drop all required courses for the 4 years.  Every course is elective.

2. Drop all course pre-requisites

3. All courses sunset every 5 years, and are revived only by action

4. Have 30% of the Senate be voting students

5. Drop tenure, and move to faculty contracts of 3-5 years

6. Involve students in the design of the curriculum offerings

7. Allow performance-based credits, regardless of the source of the

    Learning

8. Emphasize “learning by doing” throughout the entire curriculum

9. Faculty were required to be in their offices for at least 6 hours a day for

    teaching, research, and counseling

10. Public student evaluation of faculty members and their courses.

Why did I do all this radical things?  Because most universities, and also K-12 are so full of requirements that students rarely are challenged to think about what they want to learn, nor are given the responsibility for learning—it’s the teacher, professor, standards don’t give them room to have to ask “What do want to learn? How am I gong to learn it?” Yet, real life in a constantly changing 21st century need that ability.   We don’t empower students to do that.  We are still stuck in the Industrial Age mindset that the top must decide and the employees (students) must obey.

K-12 can’t wipe out standards and requirements as much as I did at SMU, but there’s no time left in this Get-It discussion for us to discuss ways that this might be adapted for K-12 also.  But I’ll bet creative people like yourselves could think about it and make some progress.  If we keep on doing whast we’ve always done, K-12 will get what we always got—students not pjrepared for learning how to learn.  

thoughtful posts by both of you. As a principal I try very hard to “walk the walk” with my own learning and how I use technology to enhance my skills.  However, I feel that the majority of school admin is quite far from ever being able to use today’s tools to improve their skills and knowledge for the future.