Educational Administrators

Greetings to all educational administrators. I am the Information Coordinator for our group. We include school heads and principals, superintendents, Head Start and daycare directors, directors of training in businesses, heads of educational agencies, government education officials, and many more. (I'm sure there are different titles in different countries and a number of administrative position focused on teaching/learning that I haven't thought of.) We are administrators, managers, supervisors, directors, and leaders.

We have our own issues and opportunities. It is time for us to build our own network and movement within the RC Community and in the wide world. I am confident that we can accelerate our re-emergence and the process of educational change by being in touch with each other. Together we can clarify our visions and goals, refine old strategies and develop new ones, and learn from each other. We can inspire each other and assist each other to challenge feelings of powerlessness and/or isolation. We can deepen our understanding of our positions in the class society. We can enhance our abilities to use our positions to be catalysts for liberation and for transformation of society through the educational institutions and agencies in which we work.

Please send me your name, address, and phone number and at least a sentence about what your position is. If you have time to write about some recent successes and about current insights, goals, and struggles, that would be great. I will put together whatever people send me and get copies of it out to everyone who writes to me. I hope that over time we can get to know each other and what each other is doing.

In addition to being the Information Coordinator for educational administrators, I am the Regional Reference Person for the Pioneer Valley Region in western Massachusetts, USA. I am the principal (or head) of a 600-student public elementary school (grades kindergarten to six, ages five to twelve). I'm also the parent of two children, who attend the school where I am principal. I have been leading educational change workshops within RC for about twelve years.

In recent workshops I've been having teachers, students, parents, and "other learners" spend significant amounts of time meeting separately and have been encouraging each group to develop its own liberation movement within the broader educational change movement within RC. This past summer a group of administrators met regularly during the Northeast U.S. Educational Change Leaders' Workshop. It was an important experience for each of us and one we are eager to see more of.

I will be leading what I think will be our first weekend workshop: May 6-8, 1994, in Hebron, Connecticut, USA.

We are quite spread out, and we will need to travel considerable distances to get together. I hope you will plan to come to the workshop even if it is farther than you usually travel to a workshop. I think it will be useful and important for us to be together. We may be able to arrange some outreach help for transportation if it's needed. Please let me know right away if you will need help to come to the workshop. I look forward to getting to know you.

FOR THOSE WHO ARE NOT EDUCATIONAL ADMINISTRATORS:

Why not share what you know about the tools and insights of RC with an educational administrator in your neighborhood? Give them a little basic theory and then listen to them for a few sessions. (Every educational administrator has a great need to be listened to in a confidential setting.) Then put them in touch with me.

If you know someone in RC who is an administrator in education please get them to write to me. Alternatively, you can send me their name and address yourself. This group can make quite a difference in the lives of many people and in our societies.

Russ Vernon-Jones 
Amherst, Massachusetts, USA


Last modified: 2022-12-25 10:17:04+00