The Courage to Grow: Leading with Intentionality - Hardcover

Servais, Kristine; Sanders, Kellie

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1442216077 ISBN 13: 9781442216075

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2012

Synopsis

The Courage to Grow: Leading with Intentionality shows educational leaders how to design and carry out a leadership professional development plan. It is a guide that allows leaders to construct their own learning to measure knowledge, assess growth, and improve performance. This training manual is for the teacher leader, beginning principal, practicing principal, assistant principal, department chair, district office administrator, aspiring leadership candidate, and professor of principal preparation.
Chapters begin with a section called Learning with Intentionality, as defined as an intense energy or desire to grow exponentially, followed by a personal application of Caring with Intentionality. Chapters 2 – 7 include a leadership self-assessment utilizing the ISLLC Standards and conclude with growth activities. Depending on their leadership roles, the readers can select activities best suited to grow performance from present realities to ideal conditions for learning. The reader is then encouraged to design a personal Action Plan that takes into account knowledge from each chapter, strategies for growing performance with intentionality, and self-assessment results. Finally, each chapter includes websites, resources, and activities to improve leadership.

About this title

About the Author:

Kristine Servais is associate professor of educational leadership at North Central College in Naperville, Illinois. Servais has studied school principals and, in particular, transformational leadership as a means for schools to collaboratively create a community of learners. Specifially, her research has focused on the roles, responsibilities, and relationships of the principal as a transformational leader in school-university partnerships. Servais provides administrator workshops and academies on the topics of professional learning communities, meeting management, team building, and type preference. She also has been a middle school and elementary teacher, middle school assistant principal and principal, and director of field experiences for pre-service teachers. The middle school at which she was principal was recognized as a National Blue Ribbon School of Excellence.

Kellie Sanders is a principal at Walker’s Grove Elementary School in Plainfield, Illinois. She has been a middle school teacher for ten years and a middle school assistant principal. She has a doctorate in educational administration, and her primary focus has been on the purpose, perceptions, and practices of leadership assessment. An area of continued focus for Kellie has been facilitating professional development for teachers and principals in the area of diversity, equity, social justice, and social emotional learning.

Review:

The Courage to Grow is an important resource not only for educational administrators but for policymakers, teacher-leaders, aspiring leaders, and anyone interested in the complex and challenging relationship between leadership actions and organizational impact. Packed with practical tools and self-assessments, this book will encourage new leaders and challenge veteran leaders to improve their strategies. Above all, the book challenges the reader to make specific personal commitments. It is not possible to read this volume passively—you will use it as a daily manual for personal development. (Douglas B. Reeves, chairman, The Leadership and Learning Center)

In The Courage to Grow, Servais and Sanders provide educational leaders from all levels, organizations and roles with an indispensable guide for plotting a personal learning journey according to the ISLLC Standards. Educational leaders who follow the recommendations in this book not only take charge of their professional growth, but steer it toward becoming an extraordinary leader. (Ellie Allison, founder and president, Renewal Coaching)

The authors have hit a home run with this book. I love it. They clearly have put a great deal of thoughtful work and research into this book. The book is well-written and clearly organized. It covers a comprehensive array of topics and offers specific suggestions for identified leaders e.g. the district leader, educational professor and so on. I am going to try several of the activities beginning with the cultural scavenger hunt as school culture is an upcoming topic in my class. I appreciate having suggestions I can implement in my university classes. They have great suggestions for activities. The engaged learner strategies are immediately useful in my classroom. They modeled engaged learning in writing this book as well providing activities. Well done! (Mary Lynne Derrington, former superintendent; author; and educational leadership professor in the doctoral program at the University of Tennessee)

Servais and Sanders have done it again. In an attempt to further narrow the knowing-doing gap, The Courage to Grow is the perfect follow-up to The Courage to Lead. Reading is always an active process, but when these authors put pen to paper the reader better be ready to truly act. Servais and Sanders are establishing themselves as leaders in taking educators through detailed actions for growth. A must read (and act) for any school leader or anyone who has an influence in our schools. (Donald A. McKinney, superintendent of schools West Harvey-Dixmoor School District 147 in Harvey, IL; adjunct professor, Northern Illinois University)

Courage to Grow. I know that many of my colleagues will benefit from having this book as a resource. Great content and resources! (Linell Monson-Laswell, assistant professor at National-Louis University; former assistant superintendent)

About this edition

• Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 1442216077
• ISBN 13: 9781442216075
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 202