Dr. Timothy Mitchell Rapid City Area Schools 9/26/13

“Leadership is about going somewhere. If you and your people don’t know where you are going, your leadership doesn’t matter.” Ken Blanchard

Confront the Brutal Facts Communication (Effective) Collaboration

Building a community of life long learners, one student at a time.

All Rapid City Area School students will achieve to their full potential.

To embrace learning rather than teaching as a school’s mission, to work collaboratively to help all students learn, to focus on results to foster continuous improvement and to assume individual responsibility to take steps to create such a school.

I provide the leadership to create a purposeful learning community that creates high quality learning experiences for all community members.

 Community Support  Community Involvement  Community Trust

Overarching Theory When a school systems learns, continuous improvement enables educators to close achievement gaps and ensures that all students grow and develop as learners.

In order to disagree, learn from mistakes, successfully manage conflict, and continually learn, the systems needs sufficient: Trust Capacity Building for ALL educators Collaboration in All directions Leadership at all levels

*Provide a safety net for taking risks *It is necessary for the system to achieve beyond capacity *Need to pay attention to the needs of all the stakeholders

 Function of two things: ◦ Integrity ◦ Competence

 Integrity ◦ Honesty-telling the truth & leaving the right impression ◦ Congruence-no gaps between intent and behavior “walk your talk” ◦ Humility-recognize principles before yourself ◦ Courage-do the right thing-even when hard

 Competence ◦ Your capabilities ◦ Your skills ◦ Your results ◦ Your track record ◦ They are both vital-one without the other will not work

Clarify Expectations -to create shared vision and agreement about what is to be done up front

Practice Accountability -Hold yourself accountable. Hold others accountable. Take responsibility for results. Be clear on how you’ll communicate how you’re doing and how others are doing. Don’t avoid or shirk responsibility. Don’t blame others or point fingers when things go wrong.

*Quality teaching has a positive impact on student learning *Teaching competencies can be taught *Professional learning can increase teacher competencies in ways that will result in increased student learning

The knowledge about effective practice becomes more widely available and accessible on a daily basis Working together generates commitment

“It is no longer sufficient to have one person learning for the organization. It’s just not possible any longer to figure it out from the top. The organizations that will truly excel in the future will be the organizations that discover how to tap people’s commitment and capacity to learn at all levels of the organization” Peter Senge

*Good ideas can come from anywhere *Include as many people as they can in key decisions

 Autonomy-the desire to direct your own life ◦ This does not mean condoning and allowing people to do “whatever they want” ◦ The “How” of the things we do-Supportive Limits  Mastery-the urge to get better and better at something that matters ◦ Your ability is not finite  Purpose-the yearning to do what we do as a service of something larger than ourselves

What must we have to provide a high quality education for all students of the RCAS?

“A man who doesn’t trust himself can never truly trust anyone else.” -Cardinal de Retz