Principals are problem solvers
I know you heard from Roger Martin today did he talk earlier today? Yeah and I wasn't able to be here but I did read his paper on how successful leaders think.
And um you are examples of those successful leaders. So it follows that you are all capable of the kind of integrative thinking that uh that he talks about in that paper.
And you know he talks about the idea of holding two opposing ideas in your mind. I bet you can hold more than two opposing ideas in your mind.
Yes, I think probably you can. You synthesize every day all the time you take the; the best of what you're hearing from your communities, from your kids, from your teachers and you form new ideas.
And that is what makes you strong leaders--those innovative solutions. You are problem solvers. That's what you do and you know we don't know the half of it at the ministry. And I'm sure you have said that “they don't know the half of it”, right?
But I know in my heart I may not be able to articulate the specific problems and resolutions that you find yourself confronting every day and then finding every day, but in my heart I know how challenging every single day is and how interrupted you are in your train of thought -- in your course of action.
The plan that you come in with in the morning… how it changes by I don't know 10, 9, 8 and that you have to you have to re-jig and reformulate and I know that that goes on every single day for you.
And that's your value. That is your value and that's why that's why educators are such an important part of our society.
Because you are able to think like that. You know if I'm in a room of educators, the whole nature of the conversation is so different than being in a room of non-educators and that's not to diminish other people.
It's just to say that you are so interested and curious and you're so not afraid to look at a problem and find a way around it.