For the second year in a row I am teaching in a program put on by Advance Innovative Education put on in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. The program is called “Redesigning Lessons, Re-envisioning Principals (RPRL).”
I am conducting a two day workshop that is part of a year long program. My sessions are on how entrepreneurial practices and
principles can be applied to educational organizations. The participants include some new and many aspiring school principals. Yesterday they learned how to think like an entrepreneur through identifying and assessing opportunities.
I made them just not “think out of the box,” but actually “throw away the box.” When we only think out of the box we stay too close to our old ways and keep really close to the box that represents our old thinking. And it is too easy to jump back into the box as soon as things get just a wee bit uncomfortable. We cannot open our minds to real opportunity for change if we stay tethered to old ways of acting and thinking.
Being with these highly motivated educators gives me hope for the future of educational in the US.
There is a growing interest in how business principles — such as
competition and entrepreneurial innovation — can help fix what is
ailing the educational system. Of course we are seeing a huge resistance from teachers’
unions and many schoosl of education in universities. But, parents, business
owners, and civic leaders are beginning to say “enough is enough.”