Innovation Leaders Academy off to running start

The first meeting of the Innovation Leaders Academy (ILA) was held April 26-27 at the Friday Institute.

The ILA is comprised of educators from several school districts in northeastern North Carolina - Franklin, Roanoke, Granville, Weldon City, Northampton and the Roanoke River Valley Educational Consortium. These teachers and administrators have partnered with the Friday Institute on research projects and are now on the leading wave of innovation in schools. The ILA meeting allowed educators and Friday Institute and College of Education faculty the opportunity to meet and kick off a multi-year partnership.

Dr. Tom Alsbury, Dr. Andy Overstreet and Dr. LaTefy Schoen - all former school administrators - led the two-day conference. Dr. Alsbury and Dr. Schoen are assistant professors in the Department of Educational Leadership & Policy Studies, and Dr. Overstreet is director of operations for the Friday Institute and a faculty member in the department.

The purpose of the academy is to offer district and school innovation teams the long-term, customized partnership needed to realize sustained change.

"We are looking for ways to partner with you," Dr. Alsbury said. "We are comfortable with flexibility, because innovation is about flexibility. Together, we can take a journey. The journey makes the difference for sustainable innovation to take place."

The ILA is unique in that there is no set agenda for the participants to follow. Instead, the participants will be equipped to lead their respective schools into the future. To do this, the group learned about effective leadership strategies and ways to help their schools become future ready.

"We are gathered here to define, stimulate and support innovative school-based practices in your districts," Dr. Overstreet said. "We are not about prescribing solutions. We are about you inventing solutions. Innovation in schools is sometimes hard. Schools like to build consensus and innovation requires divergent thinking. We are not necessarily looking for new things; we are looking at things in new ways."

Systemwide innovation is important to success, Alsbury noted. "You have to think about how any innovation will benefit the school system," he said. "Most innovations fail, so we have to find ways to sustain our changes over time."

Academy members will be leaders in the field as they work in their own schools. They are charged with facilitating innovation at perhaps the most important level of education - the classroom. These leaders will head teams within the school, who will then work together to create new ways of teaching, learning and using technology.

"By taking the team approach, we are sparking creativity among each other," Dr. Schoen said. "You need to share a collective vision for where you want to go and what you want to do for the students in your community."