Transitions

Endings, it is said, are only new beginnings. And so it is with the year whose end is only hours away. I thought it instructive on the cusp of a new year to consider how the transitions that we have experienced in the course of 2011 are actually opportunities to recommit to creating the best public educational systems we can imagine. At the risk of omitting some important transitions and sounding a bit like a family newsletter, permit me to mention just a few items relevant to NC Triangle leaders and leadership.

I begin with kudos to Del Burns, former Wake County Schools superintendent and now co-author of a new book, for inviting us to consider how to put the public back in public schools. I have not yet read his book, so beyond congratulating him on the courage to write on what I understand to be a fictional narrative based on the two years of upheaval sowed by the board of education election of October 2009, I cannot comment. In my opinion, Wake County Schools and the community it serves begins 2012 with far more social cohesion than it did last year, and for that we can all be grateful.

I offer for your consideration the many leadership changes across the region resulting from retirement, resignation, and reassignment. Closest to home is my own retirement from the North Carolina Public School System, an act in which I was joined by Neil Pedersen, former superintendent of Chapel Hill-Carrboro City School System. Neil was the last remaining founder of Triangle Leadership Academy, and so it evokes a kind of poetic symmetry that he and I go out together. We continue our collaboration, however, which leads me to the next new beginning.

The professional development programs of the North Carolina Principals and Assistant Principals Association in which I have been involved are taking root all over the state. More than 300 principals have matriculated or are in process of matriculating Distinguished Leadership in Practice. In 2012, we are rolling out Future-Ready Leadership for assistant principals. Neil Pedersen, Tom Williams, Kermit Buckner and I are co-creating six days of professional learning for two groups of 60-80 assistant principals to convene throughout the year in Charlotte and Raleigh. Given shrunken district budgets for in-service leadership development, this is great news.

Another outstanding supporter of mine personally and of leaders both public and private, Howard Schultz, is switching gears from his role as purveyor of VitalSmarts products to taking a broader role in foundation and public service. Howard's recent conversation with certain organization executives give me hope that we may continue to deploy Crucial Conversations©, Crucial Confrontations©, and Influencer© with senior education leaders. I hope to write more transparently in future entries.

Joining East Carolina University and North Carolina State University, Triangle educators welcomed  Gardner-Webb University's Master of Executive Leadership Studies program last August. Approximately 55 aspiring principals will continue in their second semester of study next month, with classroom instruction by Jim Palermo and me, and internship supervision by Dave Coley, Tom Benton, Tom Dixon, and Rod Ramsey. These cohort programs promise to fill the leadership pipeline for school all across the region. I have written. and will continue to write, about program improvements, but rest assured, we are finally on the right track in this state in developing the public school leaders we need.

On a more personal note, the work with High Point University that MJ Hall, former TLA consultant, invited me to be part of is continuing with great energy. Dean of School of Education, Marianne Tillery, Professor of Education, Vernon Farrington, and other HPU educators are planning with education and business VIPs across the state to explore how to improve K12 educational outcomes by leveraging boundary-spanning leadership. I count this work among the potentially most important developments in figuring out what's next in identifying and supporting senior leaders in building better schools and a better society. It's a big job and I am grateful to MJ for making me part of it.

This blog would not be complete without mentioning the election of Joe Peel as mayor of Elizabeth City. Education practitioners and policymakers across the state owe Joe a debt of gratitude if for no other reason than, when in his role as TLA executive director, he managed to persuade the state board of education to adopt TLA's seven critical functions of leadership as a basis for the new North Carolina Standards for School Executives. I will take credit for distilling the extant research and literature that produced them, but except for Joe's political influence, they would have remained only a framework for TLA learning assets.

In conclusion, I am inviting you to consider what transitions you are making in your life. What has fed and will continue to feed you, what you need to cast off and yet don, who you need to accompany you on your leadership journey, and who has come with you as far as was given to them to come. In his book, Transitions, William Bridges made an important contribution to the literature on change. Among other things, he reminds us that it is not so much change that we fear but the uncertain steps we must take that leads to the change. I invite you to fix your eyes upon the horizon and take counsel not of your fears but of your heart. You will not regret it.