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Leading for Results

Transforming Teaching, Learning, and Relationships in Schools

Second Edition

By: Dennis Sparks

In this second edition featuring 18 new thought-provoking essays, Dennis Sparks shows how school leaders can promote extraordinary changes, be accountable, and achieve meaningful results for schools, districts, and their personal lives. Using bold theories about education, leadership, teaching, and student learning, you'll learn how to make change happen, create usable strategies, commit to action, and achieve goals by:

Examining your assumptions and producing results-oriented thoughts, words, and actions
Deepening your understanding of important issues related to the interpersonal challenges of change
Engaging in next-action thinking and applying what you've learned

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Product Details

Grade Level: K-12
ISBN: 9781412949705
Published By: Corwin
Year: 2006
Page Count: 248
Publication date: October 15, 2013

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Author(s) Table of Contents Reviews

Description

Praise for the First Edition:

Sparks rejects simplistic solutions to school improvement, and honors the practical knowledge and expertise of educators."
—Richard DuFour, Educational Author and Consultant

"Dennis Sparks has given us a practical, original, and tough-minded book about what schools need now. An excellent book—but even more, a book to act on."
—Mike Schmoker, Consultant and Author

"In this inventive 'self-help''handbook for educators, Dennis Sparks challenges and helps us—not to do something but to be something different."
—Roland S. Barth, Author, Lessons Learned

Improve teaching and learning in your school by fostering personal and organizational change!

Authentic or transformational leadership flows from self-awareness regarding intentions, values, and feelings and its influence is reflected in a leader's actions. Leading for Results, Second Edition, focuses on the educational leader's role in actualizing human potential and unleashing individual and organizational energy, while promoting extraordinary performance in "ordinary" people by first changing within oneself.

In this updated edition featuring 18 new thought-provoking essays, Dennis Sparks shows how school leaders can promote extraordinary changes, be accountable, and achieve meaningful results for schools, districts, and their personal lives. Using bold theories about education, leadership, teaching, and student learning, you'll learn how to make change happen, create usable strategies, commit to action, and achieve goals by

Examining your assumptions and producing results-oriented thoughts, words, and actions
Deepening your understanding of important issues related to the interpersonal challenges of change
Engaging in next-action thinking and applying what you've learned

This powerful resource helps leaders to recognize their capacity for making a tremendous difference in their organizations, ensuring ultimate success!

Key features

The new edition includes:

18 new essays
A new section entitled "Transformation Through a Culture That Promotes Professional Learning, Teamwork, and Continuous Improvement"
Exciting ideas and useful practices gathered from the many school leaders using the book

Author(s)

Dennis Sparks

Dennis Sparks has been executive director of the 10,000-member National Staff Development Council since 1984. He previously was an independent educational consultant and director of the Northwest Staff Development Center. Sparks has been a teacher, counselor, and co-director of an alternative high school. He completed his doctorate in counseling at the University of Michigan in 1976, and has taught at several universities. He speaks frequently throughout North America on topics such as powerful staff development and effective teaching.

Sparks has authored Designing Powerful Professional Development for Teachers and Principals (NSDC, 2002) and Conversations that Matter (NSDC, 2001), a collection of his JSD interviews since 1991. He is co-author with Stephanie Hirsh of Learning to Lead, Leading to Learn (NSDC, 2000) and A New Vision for Staff Development (ASCD/NSDC, 1997). He also co-authored, with Joan Richardson, What is Staff Development Anyway? (NSDC, 1998).

Sparks’ column appears each month NSDC's newsletter, Results. His interviews with leading educational thinkers also appear in NSDC'sJournal of Staff Development. In addition, his articles have appeared in a variety of publications, including Educational Leadership, Phi Delta Kappan, The American School Board Journal, The Principal, and The School Administrator. Sparks’ interviews and articles are accessible on the NSDC web site at www.nsdc.org/library/authors/sparks.cfm.

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Introduction

How to Use This Book

Part I: Transformation Through Clarity and Creation

1. Use Fundamental Choices to Create Your Life

2. Clarify Your Intentions

3. Establish Stretch Goals

4. Identify Multiple Ways to Achieve Your Goals

5. Find the Trim Tab

6. The 80/20 Principle

7. Practice Satisficing

8. Determine Root Causes

9. Develop a Theory of Action and Use Storytelling to Communicate It

10. Gain ClarityThrough Writing, Speaking, and Reflecting on Action

11. Leaders Provide Teachable Points of View

Part II: Transformation Through Interpersonal Influence

12. Tell Your Truth

13. Use Candor to Assess Current Reality

14. Use Genuine Dialogue

15. Engage in Dialogue-Like Conversations

16. Listen to Others in a Deep, Committed Way

17. Use Silence as a Learning Tool

18. Make Requests to Initiate Action and Create Results

19. Make and Keep Promises

20. Replace Questions With Declarative Statements

21. Minimize the Language of Obligation

22. Decrease the Use of Cause-Effect Language

23. Stand Up for Your Point of View

Part III: Transformation Through a Culture That Promotes Professional Learning, Teamwork, and Continuous Improvement

24. Shape School Culture to Improve Teaching and Sustain Competent Teaching

25. Create Successful Schools

26. Promote Breakthrough Thinking

27. Attend to Leaders' Inner Development

28. Recognize Our Best Selves

29. Increase the Use of Signature Strengths

30. Enhance Your Personal Energy

31. Build Relationships to Sustain Positive Energy

32. Address the Fundamental Barriers to Professional Learning and Teamwork in Schools

33. Spread Positive Emotions Throughout the Organization

34. Address Anxiety in the Schoolhouse

35. Appeal to the Heart as Well as the Head

Part IV: Transformation Through Professional Learning and Doing

36. Design Powerful Professional Learning for All Educators

37. Match Professional Development Goals and Methods With Student Outcomes

38. Bridge the Knowing-Doing Gap

39. Amplify Positive Deviance

40. Create Professional Learning That Alters Educators' Brains

41. Install Next Action Thinking

42. Change Habits

43. Sustain the Conversation

Index

Reviews

"Sparks has distilled his vision of leadership into this helpful guide. This is a personal look at leadership, not as much about what leaders should do (although a large number of how-to's are included), but more about how leaders should think and feel to actualize their potential and unleash individual and organizational energy."

The School Administrator, May 2007

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Other Titles in: Staff Development & Professional Learning | Leadership | School Change, Reform, & Restructuring