Upper School Department Chairs Joyce Nagata and Stephanie Tucker spent a few days last week at the beautiful Whispering Pines Retreat Center for the ICG 2015 Academic Leadership Retreat. Part of the treat of this retreat is the truly great food. Joyce reports having the largest lobster she has ever eaten!
This conference addressed issues surrounding leadership, both questions regarding academic need for change as well as inter-departmental/institutional leadership challenges. We previewed the documentary Beyond Measure, follow-up documentary of Race to Nowhere. This lead to considerable discussion of PBL, Experiential, and Deep Dive, and Blended learning as means for changing the structure of learning and the challenges encountered by the represented institutions. The primary attendees were academic, student, or faculty deans. A secondary discussion presented on the afternoon of the 2nd day involved how to identify problems and working on the scaffolding for how to change or resolve them using a problem solving model called Fishbone. This is a useful tool for assessing a perceived problem, what issues surround the problem, and provides the structure for assessing the possible strategies for resolving it. Also reviewed were the results of a survey done by the ICG for member schools and their perceptions of leadership issues.
Whispering Pines Retreat Center http://web.uri.edu/wpinescc/
In A Class Of Our Own 