Welcome to the Blueprint
At GLP, we believe that staying abreast of new ideas, trends, and information is essential to visionary leadership. This is the first edition of our new monthly newsletter that seeks to help leaders cut through the noise to find resources that are worth reading.
Schools and Learning
1. Deeper Learning at the Periphery
If you work with children or adolescents, you know that a favorite word among this age group is “bored” — especially when they’re describing their experiences at school. It’s such a commonplace sentiment that we might start tuning it out. But what if we took student boredom seriously and investigated how we can create learning experiences that allow students to get authentically excited about their education — not just for a one-off class period, but in a sustainable, long-term way?

Jal Mehta (Harvard Graduate School of Education) and Sarah Fine (High Tech High Graduate School of Education) spent six years studying high schools around the country and discovered that schools are already engaging in approaches to learning that create contexts for exciting and transformative work, but it’s not typically happening in the classrooms. Instead, as they write in the New York Times, “powerful learning was happening most often at the periphery — in electives, clubs and extracurriculars.”

Mehta and Fine’s book In Search of Deeper Learning: The Quest to Remake the American High School was published by Harvard University Press on April 9. For another preview of the book, Harvard GSE recently published an excellent interview with the authors.

The approach to learning that Mehta and Fine advocate is one of the key threads in our white paper “From Financial Sustainability to ‘Thriveability’: Why We Need to Change the Conversation.” Independent schools face deep strategic challenges involving financial sustainability and parent concerns about the value of an independent school education; focusing on the quality of the student learning experience, especially in the area of “deeper learning,” will be a critically important tool in overcoming these obstacles.
2. Center-Happy
Schools are “center-happy” these days, with countless campuses creating centers of innovation, centers of leadership, centers of learning, or centers of service. Most institutions see these centers as a way to distinguish their programs and attract students, and some schools are doing transformational work in these centers. But most centers are isolated islands within the context of the learning organization and therefore sit at the edge of the student experience. Visionary leaders will reimagine the center as a true hub for learning and progress — and perhaps take a cue from some colleges and universities, where interdisciplinary, real world-relevant collaborations are forming around vexing issues like “Public Interest Technology,” as the New York Times describes.
3. Are You Really Focused on Talent?
The Economist offers some of the best research and analysis of education globally, and they rightly emphasize the importance of great teachers and new approaches to pedagogy. Don’t miss their latest report and consider how your school is attending to the critical needs to educate, support, and assess talent in alignment with the skills and capacities students need. We learn more by looking beyond our “benchmark” schools to other models, jurisdictions, and contexts!
Governance, Leadership, and Management
1. No Movie Watching
In an interview with Bridgespan, Peter Thies, president of the management consulting firm The River Group, argues that most teams struggle with collaboration because it is hard for individuals to strike a balance between being a good leader and being a good follower. This is especially the case with leadership-level teams. “By the time I’ve earned my seat at the executive table,” Thies says, “I’ve been rewarded for my leadership behavior, perhaps even for micromanagerial behavior. I may forget what it was like being a really good teammate and how to tamp down my inclination to simply take over stuff.” But it’s not as simple as simply remaining silent: leaders who are aware of their tendency to dominate decision-making processes might overcompensate and start “movie watching:” — passively spectating a discussion that actually needs your active engagement. Read the complete interview for more thoughts and a six-point checklist for supporting collaborative decision making.
2. Speak Up
“In many organizations,” writes Allison Shapira in Harvard Business Review, “our leadership readiness is measured in part by our willingness to speak up in meetings.” For some leaders (or aspiring leaders), this is easier said than done, especially in a meeting when the stakes are high. Shapira, who teaches “The Arts of Communication” at the Harvard Kennedy School, emphasizes the importance of preparation — not just in the sense of writing down a few questions or comments ahead of the meeting, but also in the sense of preparing your mindset. As you prepare for a big meeting, Shapira particularly advocates asking yourself “why you?” — which is to say, “why do you care about what you do, about your organization, or about your role?” In doing so, you’ll reframe for yourself the contributions that you’re going to make: you’re speaking up because you care about the subject, and your credibility will emanate from your commitment and passion rather than your title. Read the rest of the piece for more details and three key red flags that signal when you should refrain from speaking up.
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