Built to Last: The School Leader′s Guide for Sustaining Change While Managing Resistance
About this ebook
It’s natural to resist change – but when we fundamentally commit to putting our students first, we must also commit to make lasting changes in current practice. Can we lead individuals and school teams to embrace strategic effort and lasting growth despite challenging circumstances and inevitable resistance?
For school leaders willing to change their behavior on behalf of their teams, the answer is Yes! This practical, thoughtful book builds on what we already know about change, invites reflection, and provides guidance to develop changes that will last. Readers will learn to:
- Organize and create conditions in which staff and students flourish
- Focus on phases of change and address the critical leadership practices that will simultaneously move change forward and address the kinds of resistance that may appear
- Apply two long-term stories of district change to their own particular contexts, so they can avoid mistakes and focus on strategies that work
- Create their own relationship-rich, personalized path for leading and managing change
We can build more reliable and effective changes in schools by ensuring steady progress over time. Dig into this informative book to discover the what, how, and why of a holistic change architecture to move your teams toward impactful changes that will stand the test of time.
About the author
Dr. Michael Murphy is a national leadership coach, trainer, planning facilitator, and consultant. Even though he is a native Texan, he is now delighted to live in the Boston, Massachusetts area so he can be close to some of his family. He draws from 43 years of educational experience in urban, suburban, and rural school district settings as he trains and works with instructional coaches, teacher leaders, school leaders, and district leaders both internationally and across North America. Much of Michael’s work supports school and district leaders in planning and implementing large-scale improvement initiatives, differentiated instructional practices, the design and implementation of instructional coaching systems, visioning, understanding change and its effect on people, evaluating school improvement progress, designing exceptional professional learning, and facilitating learning in how to engage people in productive, relationship-rich, results-based conversations. Since 2009, he has consulted with varieties of school leaders in 19 states and two Canadian provinces and has presented in numerous state, national, and international symposia and conferences. Michael’s personal public-school experiences include his work as teacher, elementary specialist, assistant principal, principal, director of planning and evaluation, special assistant to the superintendent, assistant superintendent, and acting superintendent, all in several Dallas-Ft. Worth area (TX) school districts. He holds a bachelor of fine arts degree and a master’s degree in elementary education from Texas Tech University and a doctorate degree in curriculum and instruction from the University of North Texas. He has published numerous articles for national and international journals and is a contributing author or lead author for six educational books in the last ten years. Michael lives with his wife and enjoys numerous interests when not coaching, training, or consulting. These interests include the production of various forms of art media, golf, working out, travel, and being with his family. Michael can be reached at [email protected].
