Views of Leadership: An Interview with Louise Cadwell, by Guest Blogger, Melissa Tobias

The following post is authored by my friend and colleague, Melissa Tobias.  In her graduate work, Melissa is studying both the work of the Reggio Emilia schools for young children and Sustainability Education.  This year, she and I are working together in several ways through her program at Lesley University. I was honored that Melissa chose to interview me about my views and practice of leadership.  It was helpful for me to think about how I arrived at where I am now, and to talk with Melissa about the evolution that I have experienced.  The books and authors that are mentioned here were recommended to me by two mentors of mine, Lori Ryan who I worked with in St. Louis for 20 years and, Linda Henke, who I worked with in my later years in St. Louis.  I am forever grateful to both of them for all of their guidance and support in my work. 

Louise Cadwell is currently serving as an adjunct faculty member at Lesley University in the Graduate School of Education.  I am enrolled in a Masters Program at Lesley University and one of my courses this semester focuses on leadership.  For this course, we were asked to interview someone about their leadership style and inspirations.  When considering who to interview, I thought about someone who embodies leadership in multiple ways; as a teacher, an author, a researcher, a consultant, and as a mentor.  I chose to interview Louise Cadwell who is serving as an adjunct faculty member at Lesley University in the Graduate School of Education.  Louise and I met several years ago at an Education for Sustainability Institute at Shelburne Farms in Shelburne, Vermont.  As we are both from St. Louis, we instantly connected and Louise has been a serendipitous mentor for me ever since.  The following is an excerpt from my paper based on our interview.

Louise describes her view and practice of leadership as having been influenced by stepping stones...literally steps along the way that have shaped her approach. As her career developed, Louise took time to explore concepts in leadership with the other educators at The College School where she worked as a studio teacher from 1992-2002 and Curriculum Coordinator from 2003-2008.  She was particularly influenced by the work of Rick Dufour, Linda Lambert, Peter Senge and Kathy Cramer.  After reading books by Dufour, Lambert and Senge, Louise began to develop a better sense of what leadership means in regards to schools and learning communities... highly skilled and highly active teachers building a culture of leadership together. Another influential leadership theory for Louise is asset-based thinking, based on the books and workshops of Kathy Cramer.  Each of these authors and learning experiences were important stepping stones along Louise’s path of leadership.

As an education consultant, researcher, and teacher, Louise acts as a leader in many different ways.  No matter where she is in the world, or who she is working with, the same principles guide her leadership.  Her passion and dedication to collaborate and learn with other educators is what underlies all of the work that she does.  In this way, Louise’s work is driven by love; “the other-acknowledging, other-respecting, other-helping drive that reunites the separated” (Kahane, 2010, p. 32).  Her depth of knowledge, ability to teach, inspire, and share has gained her credibility and power in the field of education.   She believes that listening, asking questions, and encouraging a voice from everyone are keys to effective leadership. These practices help to create a culture of shared ownership among a group.  In this way, Louise’s power is evident.  As Kahane describes, “Our power is generating and amplifying when we realize ourselves while loving and uniting others” (Kahane, 2010. p. 26). Louise demonstrates a healthy balance of love and power in her leadership style; a passion for knowledge led by self- actualization, an urgency to share knowledge and ideas, balanced with a “power-to” approach of empowering educators to build communities of learning together.

Louise is also an effective leader because she lives an undivided life.  Louise acknowledges her whole self; her warm memories of exploring the arts and nature with her mother, as well as memories of having to be courageous to speak in front of groups as she came into her role as a leader.  Parker Palmer suggests that leaders are more effective when they share their whole, authentic self (Palmer, 2004).  Louise acknowledges that she did not always feel like a leader.  With patience and persistence, Louise came into her role as a leader.  She is authentic and honest about who she is, and acknowledges that leadership requires constant reflection.

This combination of authentic passion, content area expertise, and a strong theory of leadership grounded in power and love is what has made Louise such a successful leader.  The influential learning experiences in her life, especially based on The Reggio Approach and Sustainability Education have inspired a sense of urgency to share, teach and collaborate with others.  This sense of urgency has pushed her to take steps forward as a leader in her field.  Louise describes her leadership journey as an “evolving expertise fueled by curiosity.”  Along this path, Louise has continued to be reflective about who she is as a leader and as a learner, and will continue to serve as an inspiring mentor along the way.

Works Cited:

Kahane, A. (2010). Power and love: A theory and practice of social change. San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler

Palmer, P. (2004). A hidden wholeness: The journey toward an undivided life. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

The Art of Inquiry at Opal School, co-authored with Yvonne Liu-Constant

From February 17 to 21, Louise and Yvonne Liu-Constant, Assistant Professor of Early Childhood Education at Lesley University, led a study tour with eleven participants to Opal School of the Portland Children’s Museum.  This is the first year for Louise and the Opal School staff to collaborate with Lesley University in Cambridge, MA after two years of offering this experience for graduate credit through Butler University.  This year, the participants came not only from all over the country (OR, CA, MA, VT), but also from as far away as Beijing, China. We were mostly early childhood educators, but with diverse experiences ranging from college and graduate students, to teachers and directors, working in public as well as private settings.  The group dynamics were simply amazing–we all connected in the short week that we had together, bringing deep thoughts and provocative questions from our observations of Opal classrooms to each discussion.  During our last discussion on Friday, Louise described the week as “transformative,” and all heads nodded.

How does a week like this transform us?

Carlina Rinaldi, President of Reggio Children and Director of the Loris Malaguzzi International Center in Reggio Emilia, Italy tells us that…to learn is to love and to learn is to change.  Carlina Rinaldi also reminds us that our emotions are engaged in deep learning and that the most powerful learning is a social experience.  The kind of learning that Carlina speaks of is the kind of learning that we witnessed all week long among children and adults at Opal School.  In turn, our group of Lesley students were changed by what we observed.  None of us will ever be the same again.

This blog post will focus on one aspect of what we observed that changed us…The Power of Questions.

Our first day at the Opal School was a holiday, so we had the opportunity to take a close look at the environment while the children were not there. The presence of meaningful questions posted around the rooms caught our eye.  The questions served as invitations for children to explore the materials and the provocations invited them to think deeply.  For example, in this photo, the teachers of Opal 3 invited children to explore with wire (“What can wire do?”) while provoking a deeper inquiry about balance (“How might wire help us explore balance?” “How might wire help us express balance?”)

The questions also demonstrated how social learning is seen as critical and integrated into all learning.  For example, this question found on the art materials shelf in Opal 2, where every item is in its place, asks “What does it feel like to belong?”

Questions surrounded us in written form, but also in every classroom between a teacher and one child, or in a class meeting...in math class, in literacy studio, in  P.E. class.  What could have been statements informing and instructing students, became engaging, collaborative and thoughtful exchanges that required thinking and creativity on everyone's part.

Our participants frequently shared questions that they heard while observing in classrooms.  These questions have inspired us to change our teaching.  During group reflections, we shared:

“As a teacher, I should be posing questions, and seeing how questions can make me a better listener.”

“I’d like to create a culture of inquiry around me, and I hope that becomes more of a habit in my personal and professional life, so even when I’m talking with friends, before giving advice, I’d stop and ask: how can I make it into a question?”

“What I’m seeing here at Opal is that asking question is the pivotal act in teaching.  It turns teaching from preaching into inquiry.”

“The only way we can learn from each other about asking questions is to move to a more reflective space, which allows us to be more vulnerable with each other.”

“The questions that are posed here are open questions that invite reflective thinking rather than one correct answer.”

“The way that questions are used here is very natural, seamless with the flow of conversation.”

“Teachers at Opal are well practiced and well versed in the art of questioning…they are on the same page.”

“It seems that reflective practice is a cornerstone of teaching and learning for everyone of all ages at Opal.”

One of the books that has deepened both the understanding and practice of the language used in teaching at Opal is Opening Minds: Using Language to Change Lives, by Peter Johnston.  This book is a must read for all of us.  It demonstrates how the language that we use in classrooms can support not only students' intellectual development but also their sense of self and their social, emotional and moral development.

For those of you who would love the opportunity to visit Opal School, we highly recommend any of their professional development initiatives.  Their yearly summer symposium is a wonderful way to experience the school and hear teachers' excellent presentations about their work. Go here to register for the June Symposium.

A Week at Opal School

  Today, looking out over the Vermont landscape of white snow and bright sun, I am full of new insights and thoughts.  I returned home last night from the third intensive seminar that I have co-facilitated at Opal School of the Portland Children's Museum. The last two years have been sponsored by Butler University and this year, I worked with Lesley University.   It is a privilege to spend such quality time observing students and teachers in action, learning through dialogue with the Opal teachers, and reflecting on shared reading during the course of a week.  Opal has created a way of doing school that is truly remarkable in today's world of standardization, pre-determined outcomes and limited definitions of success.  Every time I am at Opal, I see this more clearly.

I have been privileged to work with three institutions who are working to create a new kind of school for the future that we are all living into.  Part of the mission of Butler University College of Education is to prepare students to lead schools toward what they should be, not to perpetuate schools as they currently exist.  Opal is a place that opens doors to the way school might look if the intellectual and creative capacity of students and teachers and parents were truly valued.  Among the core values of Lesley University's Graduate School of Education are: Democracy, Community, Equity, Inquiry and Leadership.  Opal School embodies these core values in every part of their teaching and learning community.

I have been fortunate to work with outstanding educational leaders for the last three years from Butler University, from Lesley University and from Opal School: in particular, Ena Shelley, Dean of the College of Education at Butler University; Yvonne Liu-Constant, assistant professor of Early Childhood at Lesley University and Matt Karlsen, Teacher Researcher, and Susan MacKay, Director at the Museum Center for Learning at Opal School.

Next week, Yvonne Liu-Constant and I will co-write a reflective post on our shared experience at Opal School as Ena Shelley and I did last year.

For now, please enjoy some of the highlights of the week at Opal School through the images here.

All Aboard the Reggio Train by Guest Blogger, Bobbi Macdonald of City Neighbors Foundation

I had a chance to gather with folks at the Princeton Junior School in NJ for a great conference on November 15th.  I took the train with Bob Dietzen, the City Neighbors Hamilton (CNH) Awesome 5th grade teacher, and was met at the train station by the CNH Fabulous 3rd grade teacher, Marilyn Mullen, along with Jessica DiLorenzo, past teacher of City Neighbors, and grand connector who brought us all to New Jersey for a conference about working with the principles and practices of the Reggio Emilia approach in American Schools. Reggio Emilia is a small city in Italy with an amazing system of preschools that were founded by the villagers after World War II.  They sold the tank left among the ruins of their town and decided to make a school that would teach children to be true to their humanity, a school that would prevent the next generation from ever choosing war.

Louise Cadwell of the Cadwell Collaborative spoke to us about Reggio Emilia.  She identified 6 essential components of the work in Reggio Emilia that can be inspirational for our work:

1.  Relevant work and projects with students.  (If you are in the city – study the city!)

2.  Redefining the teachers role.  (Facilitator and reseracher and provocateur.)

3.  The practice of dialogue.  (“Dialogue is a conversation with a center, not sides.”)

4. The multiple languages of learning.  (How many ways can children express their knowledge?)

5.  The effects of the environment on learning.  (The classroom and school environment that allow us to do our best work.)

6.  The learning community.   (Teachers looking closely and reflecting on the complex work of teaching.)

We had a lot to learn together!  Ashley Cadwell gave a great workshop on school environment and setting up the classroom.  He shared lots of great ideas, one especially that I am bringing home on this train. “School can be like a home.  Home speaks of relationships that are comfortable, organic and evolving.”

Juliana McIntyre Fenn, author of Wisdom at Play and founder of the thirty-year-old Princeton Junior School was there.  She told us she is 78 years old.  She told us to remember JOY in our work.

A great day!  The train is pulling into Baltimore.  Welcome Home.

Postscript:

Bobbi Macdonald is dynamic leader in progressive education and founder of City Neighbors Foundation in Baltimore.  City Neighbors has founded three schools! City Neighbors High School , City Neighbors Charter School, and City Neighbors Hamilton.  Click here to see Bobbi's TedX talk, and click here to hear her speak on the importance of the school environment.  Bobbi, Ashley and Louise were invited to participate in a New Jersey Association of Independent Schools Symposium, Provocative Pedagogy, at Princeton Junior School a week ago.  It was an honor to be there and to speak on a panel with Bobbi and other educational leaders from Rider University, Bank Street College of Education and Princeton Junior School.  Ashley worked with two of the City Neighbors Schools last spring and wrote about it here.

All School Design Challenge at Moses Brown in Providence, RI

On October 18th, we spent a delightful midday at Moses Brown School in Providence, RI.  I am in the middle of a design project with Moses Brown, collaborating with Cannon Design, TTT, to design a new Early Childhood Center.  On the 18th we were there see the whole school in action in a final phase of what they called the MB Challenge. Throughout the school, all the students were engaged with different problems to solve through design.  The faculty had adapted a version of Design Thinking to give the process a creative structure.  As we walked around, we saw 60 different groups, 3 year olds to high school seniors, working on their final phase of an experiment or an installation.

Each group documented their process in different ways, yet each mirrored the same design thinking process.  Below is a rough composition of a middle school challenge: How can we redesign the English classroom to better meet student needs?

From their research, the group resolved that The English classroom needs space for a variety of “stations,” more permanently installed technology, and more comfortable functional furniture in order to improve the learning experience for students and teachers.  Next, the group “multiplied” their ideas through brainstorming.  They came up with over 70 ideas.  Then, they reviewed all their ideas to discern which, or which combinations, had the most possibility and then worked to put them into place.

The kindergarteners decided to design and build an ideal play space for our hamster.  They divided into two groups, and each group built a separate “playground.”  Their shop teacher, Randy, was a great help to each group.  They kept their designs secret from each other.  Below you see them at the “unveiling” of their respective playgrounds.  They connected them with a “hamster tube.”

Moses Brown has just published a new “manifesto” of sorts, entitled MB BELIEVES, a vision for learning, people and place.   Among many enlightened declarations is...a school-wide commitment to cross disciplinary team-teaching.  Their MB Challenge was a clear demonstration of action to grow this great idea.