Board Vision exercise from 2012

I came across this today, it was a plan I made for a School District 57 Board Vision discussion that we had in March 2012. We ended up having this meeting but did not get all the way through the questions. I would like to pick some of these up again, maybe as part of the Strategic Planning process.

Here is how the plan went:

Check In:

Lessons learned: Learn personalities, have confidence, ask questions that get into areas that are difficult to talk about, recognize red-hearings in a debate, how to properly prepare for meetings, how to turn an idea that makes sense in my head into words, questions, and actions that others can understand

Questions:

1. When are detailed questions and discussion by email acceptable when getting together as a group may be difficult or may not happen in time for an issue to be addressed? 
2. Board decision vs. individual opinion, both are important - what kind of trust is needed for board members to know that individual responses to issues are professional and help resolve problems? 
3. What interest is there in having the board meet a few times as a group of seven to build our own relationship with each other and the issues facing the district and public education? (board discussion can take place like this, but of course any formal decisions need to be attended by a member of senior admin... School Act) 
4. What is our strategy for receiving frank partner group input in addition to public board meetings, and what duty do we have to respond? For example, when can we sit down for a rational discussion with PGDTA on their Bill 22 concerns? 
5. Can we write a bio and personal vision next to our SD trustee picture? In general, can we improve the way trustees use digital tools to communicate with the public? 
6. What interest is there in a board-hosted district and partners round table to help us share, focus and adapt our achievement goals and also our plans for sustainability?

Brainstorming: Focus for next 3 yrs. (can add my questions to these)

1. Safe Schools - action on drug users, dealers, bullies - are we giving too many second chances 
2. Parent concerns - how will we involve them on mandatory programs or aspects of 21st learning that might be pushed on students, loss of elective programs, where special needs funding goes 
3. Improving communication with trustees - more interaction, less passive listening, Q&A sessions, role we can play in building bridges between management and teachers more blunt honesty in documents 
4. Support for rural schools - why it’s important (community stability, equality or at least fairness in education, importance of rural regions for food security and resource stability, and what we can do, what’s the strategy for delivering education 
5. Board office communication - more open talk and blunt honesty in documents, better proof-reading of publications (e.g. internal VP application), less politics and message-management, consistent message on technology - the district is saying and doing two different things when it comes to technology 
6. Long-term planning - school plans and district plans are not taken seriously, need more editing or review from partner groups, no tech plan exists, no on-going sustainability plan, not enough input on plans (Sunshine Coast example) 
7. Sustainability - green schools, plant new trees, reduce/recover carbon taxes

Educational Leadership Conference

I was one of the SD#57 trustees that went to the 2012 Educational Leadership Conference in Vancouver (Nov 15, 16). The participants were educational staff from Ministry to senior administration to trustees to principals and some teachers and students (1200 Participants).

There were 4 Plenary speakers and many breakout sessions. The theme of the conference was ‘Partnerships for Personalization: Leading and Transforming together’.  Most of the presentations are posted at http://www.bcssa.org/fallconference.html.

My plan is to blog about what I have taken from the conference and bring this to the district as a trustee, hopefully influence some change.

I observed collaboration as a predominant theme. Collaboration as a small school district seemed to be more successful district-wide than in larger districts who had more school-wide and some joint-school success. School-wide change was most successful when collaboration was a true co-creation process.

Daniel Wilson was a Plenary Speaker of the conference speaking on collaboration in learning communities. Through graphs and examples obtained from his work in the field of social-psychology, he showed how collaboration between team members of a extreme sport competition were the most successful in navigating their tensions when language, behavior and leadership roles were flexible. When language (body or words) was aggressive or authoritative then those teams were always the losers. The most successful teams were those that had true collaboration with the use of questioning statements Success also came from sharing of leadership when new leaders were recognized for their skill, performance at a task, or ability to fill in the regular leader was exhausted and couldn’t maintain the leadership role.

He also stated that 70% of true collaboration happens from informal conversations with colleagues and the other 30% is formal. So, water cooler conversations or beers after work do make a difference.

I have often sat in meetings thinking that we are being unproductive because we are following rules and structure and if we all stood up in a group and dropped the pretense then perhaps true conversations would ensue. I think those statistics affirm that my intuition is right.

A breakout session that I went to was the "Village of Attachment: Developing the Whole Child." This came from SD#41 Burnaby (see their presentation here)  The vision is that every child be in a nurturing relationship with an adult. They have expanded the word family to include a network of adults that work to bring out and guide children so that they have a purpose. Through finding commonalities they engage children to begin conversations and eventually relationships. Through these relationships the adult pulls out the child's reasons for purpose in life or their ‘spark’ to quote Peter Benson. A spark is a characteristic that gives them a purpose to life or motivation to do something. Their spark does not have to be what they eventually become or do for a profession, but it is developed in them.

This process is also transfered to adult to adult relationships. Whether within schools or districts it is about recognizing what we (individually or collectively) are good at and utilizing it to help improve us. This is where collaboration can be effective in openly recognizing our strengths and weaknesses and collaborating with someone who can help us where we want to improve. David Hargreaves (plenary speaker) spoke of this form of collaboration being practiced in Britain with teachers but it failed where it was mandatory. The key was to survey and see where our educators felt they wanted to collaborate and improve. Because making yourself vulnerable is part of the process, it needs to be kept transparent to avoid implying that any individual is incompetent.

It is my perspective that the 2010 school closure process had gaps in collaboration that has resulted in leftover tension that I hope will be addressed as the board starts conversations around strategic planning and an extended management and finance committee to discuss the budget. In order to collaborate there will be social tensions, but how we navigate the language, roles, vulnerabilities and competencies will result in co-creations that will result in a new placed trust and district wide visions. A village of collaboration and attachment is my optimistic vision.