Administrators Academy: Innovation in Leadership

Your system is perfectly designed to get the results you’re getting. If you want to change the results, you’ll need to change the system.

This message greeted more than 80 school administrators and leaders gathered to deepen their capacity to lead system-wide instructional change. Participants at the Administrators Academy at the National Service-Learning Conference in San Jose, Calif., worked throughout the day to answer an essential question: How are education systems positioned to drive deeper levels of service-learning and what leadership opportunities support the work?

Facilitators Harriette Thurber Rasmussen, a consultant with Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education, and Kate McPherson, the Executive Director of Project Service Leadership, led district and school leaders in thinking about how to support service-learning as an instructional strategy. Participants learned from each other’s experiences and evaluated their own systems to determine how they are positioned to support system-wide change in their schools and districts.

A panel from the service-learning community — representing superintendents, students, principals, education professors, and Learn and Serve America — addressed questions on how innovation can address key leadership challenges. School and district leaders drew from those perspectives, as well as insights from Ken Robinson’s presentation on fostering creativity and innovation among students, teachers, and administrators.

Attendees left the Administrators Academy inspired with new ideas to implement in their work and are still connecting after the conference on the Generator School Network in the Administrators’ Network. Administrators can share ideas, continue the discussions and discover new resources that will assist them in promoting system-wide service-learning.