Excerpt from Leadership Now, April 30, 2020
Leadership Reflection: How much thought have you given to innovative thinking, expanding your perspective, and changing your thinking about processes in the school? The crisis of Covid-19 gave no time to pause or plan for the changes necessary to provide instruction to 43,000 students while schools were shuttered. Outside-of-the-box thinking has been required to act quickly to lead during unprecedented times.
Five weeks into virtual instruction that resulted in more contact with families by phone or email, meeting with PLCs/teachers using TEAMS, conducting parent meetings including IEP’s or retention meetings virtually, how has your leadership thinking and practice changed? Have you or your staff members implemented and experienced a change in practice which resulted in improved methods for serving students and families?
Recently I heard it said that the budget meetings, conducted virtually, were efficient and very productive. New tactics were deployed because budget committee members were required to practice social distancing, yet the task needed to be completed. Might budget meetings continue to be conducted virtually in future years?
In your leadership role, how do you practice curious mind thinking? Nobel prize winner, Physicist Richard Feynman, reminds leaders to leave room open for doubt so the door to critical thinking and learning prevails: “A scientist is never certain. We all know that. We know that all our statements are approximate statements with different degrees of certainty; that when a statement is made, the question is not whether it is true or false but rather how likely it is to be true or false…Scientific knowledge is a body of statements of varying degrees of certainty-some unsure, some nearly sure, none absolutely certain.”
As ‘the school’ changed in response to the Covid-19 crisis, how certain are you on how school should look in the future? Are you evoking curious thinking as it relates to the future of delivering instruction, leading schools and assuring all students have access to academics, arts, athletics and other experiences they need to become our future leaders? Are there things you were sure of before March 15, 2020 that cause you to ask, “Is here a better way?”
