LEAD Team meets with the Educational Development Center

On January 23, 2006, Sue Feldman from EDC (Educational Development Center) met with the Eugene LEAD Team. She will be our contact person in providing technical assistance this calendar year. Below are the EDC project objectives, and a pictorial report of the activities in the EDC's first meeting with LEAD Team administrators.

Project Objectives

1. Articulate descriptions of K-12 Learning Communities' infrastructure and their role and impact on leader performance in schools
2. Determine measurable objectives for assessing the effectiveness of each K-12 Learning Community
3. Collect initial evidence of progress toward meeting objectives
4. Develop interim progress reports to be shared with District 4J Superintendent and LEAD Project Director
5. Draft recommendations for improvement interventions, if needed
6. Apply trial interventions as appropriate
7. Develop final report to include recommendations that will be shared with District 4J and the Wallace Foundation in June 2006

Sue Feldman explains that part of her task is to be able to "tell the story beyond Eugene," to have national impact.	Randy Bernstein shares South Region K-12 Learning Community activities and progress from the Jan. 3, 2006 inservice day.	Sheldon Region administrators listen attentively as each region shares their experiences.
Kay Mehas, Program Director, and Phil McCullum from the University of Oregon College of Education hear reports as Program Assitant Larry Brown records.	North and Churchill Region administrators listen to other regions after they have shared their regions' progress.	Then Sue had a data collection task for the group - write down your personal current knowledge about * learning community leadership concepts and strategies.
Administrators wrote down their first thoughts about the question, and then at the signal, passed the paper on to the next person.	Then they read the comments made by the prior person, underlined what they agreed with, and wrote down any additional thoughts they had about the topic.	After each question had made the rounds of the group for comments, the task was to read all the comments on the topic and write a summary statement. This gave a quick sense of the group understandings of the topics.

* Learning Community Leadership Questions:

• If you had to explain the leadership community to someone who knew nothing about it, what would you say?
• Where do your ideas about learning communities come from?
• If the learning community is to be completely succesful, what will be different in the Eugene school district in five years?
• Describe a time in or out of school when you knew you were learning in community.  What about the experience told you there was learning going on and that there was community?
• What evidence do you look for of community in the leadership learning community?
• What makes a learning community a community?
• What does a leadership learning community do that makes it a learning community?
• What is the purpose of the leadership learning community?
• What processes or practices that are currently used best support the work of the leadership learning communities?
• What does a learning community mean to you?
• What practices or processes would you like to see used that are not currently used by the leadership learning community?