Thought I’d post a quick update on how my new summer Master’s seminar, Leadership During a Crisis, is going. I’ve got six students in the class. We meet virtually every Tuesday for a couple of hours, in addition to our other activities.
The students co-constructed their learning experiences with me. We are trying to approach the class with a very broad leadership lens. That means that we’re discussing crisis leadership practices across a variety of societal sectors, not just education. We spent our first class getting ourselves organized, which included brainstorming some things that we wanted to do together this summer and identifying the learning outcomes that we wanted to achieve.
Our first guest was Shawn Loescher, CEO of the Urban Discovery Schools in San Diego, California. He articulated quite passionately what it meant to respond effectively to the needs of students and families during the coronavirus pandemic this spring. We appreciated his values-driven leadership lessons and had an awesome discussion afterward. Our guests for the next two weeks are from the business and fine arts sectors.
My students are completing reflections each week of what is in their heads at the moment. Additionally, two students are going to try their hand at creating a case study on crisis leadership (and hopefully submit for publication). One student is diving deep into an inquiry project and another is creating some professional learning modules for school leaders. Finally, two students are working with me to analyze and write up my Coronavirus Chronicles interview series. They will co-author a book chapter with me and get a publication for their resumes!
