Change Leadership & Managing Fundamentals (Wagner & Mullin)

In a phone conversation with a principal in NJ, the book Change Leadership: A Practical Guide to Transforming Our Schools by Tony Wagner was recommended strongly to me.  I picked it up an was immediately impressed once I began reading about the intentions and methods used to strategically build capacity and prevent institutional inertia.  It became, literally, a guidebook, for our school’s transformation efforts when I was nominated to chair the school’s Restructuring Committee.

Here’s a link to one of his most commonly used PowerPoints describing ‘Reinventing America’s Schools’: http://www.cocsd.k12.az.us/superintendent/Change%20Leadership%20in%20Education.ppt

In addition to Tony Wagner’s work, I also learned through a colleague on the Restructuring Committee that the director of the Office of High School Renewal, Kathleen Mullin, was a driving force for change in the Boston Public School system.  She has since moved from that post to head efforts at Northeastern University in school transformation.

Here are two links to some of her PowerPoint lectures, ‘Managing Fundamental Change in High School Reform’ and ‘Size Does Matter and Small is Beautiful: Personalizing the Learning Environment’:  http://www.bobpearlman.org/BestPractices/U_K/Size%20Does%20MatterKM.ppt and http://www.bobpearlman.org/BestPractices/U_K/ManagingFundamentalChangeKM.ppt