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Guest Thinkers

Servant leadership?

While browsing in Barnes & Noble last night, I ran across this quote from Joy at Work:


The idea of servant leadership in K-12 education is nothing new. As with anything else, there are even institutes on the topic. However, this quote got me thinking…

Not only are many administrators failing to provide school environments that adequately prepare students for their digital futures, they don’t even seem to care. Even if they do care or say they care, they don’t act as if they do (examples of this would include 1) insisting that they get better trained in technology leadership concepts, or 2) initiating conversations around topics like What does our school organization need to look like for the 21st century?). Instead, our formal leaders are either still locked in traditional mental paradigms about schooling or are simply reactive to the latest fad and/or directive from state or federal governments.

This seems to violate the very core of the idea that administrators and schools should be serving the needs of students and society. The root word of administrator is minister, or servant. This seems to have been lost somewhere along the way.

By the way, our educational leadership preparation programs aren’t fulfilling their obligations either. I’m not trying to pick on just K-12 folks.


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