At the heart of
Transforming Education
is a commitment to create schools that are healthy, dynamic places where every member learns, leads, and makes a difference.
Institute Booklets
Monograph Library
An Introduction to Human-Centered School Transformation
Description
Author: Linda Henke, Published 2017
In this introductory monograph, Henke describes her difficult transition into the superintendency of a small, failing school district located in an inner-ring suburb of St. Louis. As she worked to gain her footing in a dysfunctional organization, she discovered new ways of thinking, doing and being that challenged what she knew about leadership. The model for human-centered leadership emerged from her team’s learning as the school district climbed from one of the bottom 25 districts of Missouri’s 587 districts to one of the top 25.
Creativity and Courage:
A Look at Creativity
Description
Author: Dr. Louise Cadwell, Published 2019
Developing an Ethic of Excellence in Our Schools
Description
Author: Linda Henke, Published 2017
In this monograph, Henke examines the impact of Ron Berger’s book, An Ethic of Excellence, on the School District of Maplewood Richmond Heights. Using the book as a jumping off point, district leaders developed five strategies that deeply influenced the way they did their work. Consistently applying these strategies in their daily practice imbued teaching, learning, and leading with energy and a shared belief that anything was possible if they were clear and collaborative about what they wanted to create.
Engaging in Transformative Work in Elementary Schools
Description
Author: Susie Morice, Published 2017
Author Susie Morice takes readers inside two amazing schools where leadership and learning stand outside the norm. Morice uses ethnographic processes to paint rich pictures of teaching, learning and leading in Opal School in Portland, Oregon and City Garden Montessori in St Louis, Missouri. These school descriptions guide readers to a clear understanding of what it means to be immersed in transformative processes. The monograph explores the schools’ shared beliefs that support a culture of deeper learning; the look, the feel, and sound of the schools; structures that support deeper learning; and the scholarship and academics that reflect a culture of deeper learning.
Leaders as Lead Learners
Description
Author: Dr. Linda Lambert, Published 2019
Many know Dr. Lambert as the author of The Constructivist Leader, a neo-classic of the school leadership literature. In this monograph she speaks to the role of leaders in fostering deeper learning. She writes “Deeper learning begins with lead learners, leaders as learners.” The monograph addresses such questions as:
- Who is the leader?
- How do leader learn?
- How do they perceive and model learning?
- How do leaders think about and design their own learning and learning for others?
- Are they consciously explicit about their own learning to others?
- And what are the implications for schooling?
She has interviewed exceptional leaders with whom the Santa Fe Center has worked with in Missouri, New Mexico and California and culled some striking similarities in their leadership behavior. The first half of the monograph examines these descriptors of leaders as learners.
The later half of the monograph turns to the question, “How do we design experiences in school so that . exceptional learning is available to all”?
Throughout the monograph Dr. Lampert provides rich descriptions of how her interviewees lead and learn and in turn provide organizational cultures fostering deep learning.
Positive Connectedness
Description
Author: Zach Taylor, Published 2022
In this monograph, long-time educator, trainer, and mindful leadership coach, Zach Taylor, explores the research, strategies, and tools for creating positive relationships and positive school cultures. He describes how connections in a school, when paid attention to and kept healthy, allow for the organizations to thrive and for deeper learning to flourish. Zach includes inspiring examples, descriptive models, and useful tools, to help readers come away with a foundation for creating positive connectedness in themselves, their classrooms, and their schools.
Practice and Possibilities
Description
Author: Susie Morice, Published 2018
In this monograph, Morice examines the principles of deeper learning and describes how those principles unfolded in specific secondary classrooms. Through four scenarios, readers can live the learning curve for students and teachers alike. These descriptions offer entry points for educators to unleash dynamic learning environments that ensure students love learning, become careful thinkers and active stewards of their own learning. Further, the monograph guides the reader through clear pathways for shifting mindsets, building skills, and creating structures that allow deeper learning to flourish at any educational level.
Shared Leadership: Transformational Collaboration
Description
Author Barbara Kohm, Published 2019
This monograph will help define what shared leadership is and how it looks In practice. Provided are tools one can use to move to an effective, human-centered transformational ideal.
Barbara describes two schools: one where competition and compliance are the primary motivators and a second were curiously and improvement are the chief factors motivating staff efforts. She then outlines how to move from the former to the later by defining shared leadership and the mind sets and the processes/tools one can use to make the transition.
Shared Leadership: Empowering and Developing Student Leadership
Description
Author: Dr. Angelia Sanderson Moore, Published 2019
Dr. Moore has been actively engaged in the work of transforming students as leaders. Its her firm belief that shared leadership is a critical pattern contributing to transformational school change. She writes, “while educators often focus on developing leadership capacity among their staffs, it is also keenly important to tap our most important stakeholders and potential leaders, the student themselves.”
In this monograph Dr. Moore provides both a theoritical and tactical guide to building student leadership. It guides readers through leadership efforts in a suburban high school in St. Louis, Missouri and a public Pre-K through 8 elementary school in Santa Fe, New Mexico where student leadership is changing the schools’ cultures.
Supporting Personal and Organizational Resilience
Description
Author: Catherine Von Hatten, Published 2017
Catherine Von Hatten, who served for five years as the assistant superintendent of MRH during it’s most difficult period, has crafted an informative monograph exploring the importance of resilience in a transformational organization. Von Hatten digs into the current research and concludes that resilience can be learned—both by individuals and by organizations. The monograph is full of specific useful ways to nurture resilience in ourselves and in our schools.
The Language of Vision
Description
Author: Linda Henke, Published 2017
A part of the Santa Fe’s Center’s series on the language of leadership, The Language of Vision explores three language tools that can support the leader in nurturing a compelling vision: framing, narrative and metaphor. The monograph offers specific stories and strategies to build a leader’s confidence and competence in using language as a powerful leadership resource to influence organization’s direction.