What if the efforts in transformational growth across a district were modeled, reinforced, and expected by every person hired?
What if new hires, even at the Cabinet and Executive Cabinet levels, understood how to lead via servant leadership, empower all levels, build creative thinking, and support autonomy rather than efforts at proving they have the power and control through compliance?
Boomerang Hires - That's what I call people who are hired in administrative roles that reinforce the opposite of what is most needed in education, most wanted by students and teachers in terms of transformation, and the focus of a district's efforts the past year or two.
Why is it that educational systems say they want to be innovative, strive for innovation, and encourage teachers to try innovative ideas in the classroom, then hire district office leaders who model and reinforce the opposite?
The Boomerang Hire is the person put in a Cabinet or Executive Cabinet role that others feel a sense of compliance toward who actually brings a district backward in time in terms of innovation and transformational growth. It's the person hired who says they are there to provide structure, rules, and ensuring the focus is on common core standards.
What happens when the district already moved beyond that toward true transformation building autonomy for teachers, choice in classrooms, and creative thinking? It forms an automatic barrier and blockade pulling everyone back toward the past practices. The more people at the district level who model and reinforce this conformity, structural control, and lack of creativity, the stronger the pull back toward practices that existed before the transformation efforts began.
How much farther can the boomerang effect pull?