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Step by Step With Cambodian Leaders
January 2006
It is the end of January, two months since I last wrote, and Cambodia has moved from the rainy season to the dry, from the cool season to the hot, from mud to dust, from frequent evening breezes to still warm nights and from a mosquito-free apartment to a mosquito filled one. The harvest season has passed, the wedding season is upon us and politics continue to grab the headlines. The arrests and incarcerations of media and human rights leaders chills the voice of dissent (and then, quite mysteriously, they are released!). As I have said before, Cambodia always seems to teeter on the edges of chaos and stability, see sawing back and forth. Meanwhile we work at preparing trainers to conduct workshops and offer support for the school principals.
Here is the passionate leader and teacher, Iv Sarik, teaching a group of school principals in Kratie Province.
Sarik's conviction that we must ground our work "in the system" has meant that in November and December we conducted three regional workshops for provincial and district level leaders . . . and a few school principals. The workshops were designed to do two things: stimulate their thinking about how they could better support school principals' leadership development and allow them to actually experience various components of the Leadership 1 Workshop itself. Each workshop experience gave us the chance to refine various aspects of the training . . . each time revising the teaching module.
An interesting event took place in early December. The World Bank sent a "Mission Team" to assess the progress of the entire thirty million dollar project. In the meeting that the team scheduled with Sarik and I, they asked us if we thought the model we had created for leadership development was sustainable? Would change continue after the project? We were not prepared for that blunt a question. So, we just said "No." Given our original budget we had designed a leadership development program that had a good theory of action, fit the budget but would not allow the growth of deep roots and would never continue after the project. The model was spreading thin resources over too wide a spectrum. The Bank representatives said they were not interested in spreading peanut butter. They wanted sustainability and told us to forget the original budget and design an enhanced program that would last. So we are in the process of that enhancement design while we continue to implement our original plan. Below is a brief description of that enhancement thinking so far. And just day before yesterday we got preliminary emails from the Bank that they like the expansion ideas and the price tag that accompanies it!! It feels like a wonderful opportunity.
A major component of the World Bank funded project is providing scholarships for poor families so that their children can continue schooling beyond primary school. These are lower secondary school children waiting to go to class. You notice several who can't afford a uniform.
FOR DISCUSSION ONLY
Leadership Development Program Enhancement 2006-2009
January 2006
In order to deepen and sustain leadership capacity for school directors in Cambodia, there will need to be an enhancement of the current Three Year Plan for leadership development as part of the CESSP. When the project was originally designed in September 2005, it made budgetary assumptions based on the original PIP. Since then we have determined that the model created for leadership development is sound but that with the current allocated resources, it will be unsustainable beyond the period of the grant and will not create deep and transformative new knowledge and skills. In essence, it will be a thin veneer that will look nice for a short period of time and then will quickly fade away.
The Leadership Development Program model has four important components:
1. Leadership workshops to introduce new knowledge and skills. These workshops are designed specifically to target areas of leadership development that are both needed and possible to achieve with school directors. In addition, they are linked closely with the Teacher Development component of CESSP. It is critical that both sets of training opportunities use the same language, encourage very similar knowledge acquisition and skill development.
2. Leadership Support Teams made up of POE and DOE leaders from the supported provinces that are designed to support the school directors' professional growth AND to deepen the commitment to leadership development at the provincial and district levels. Expanding leadership development to the RTTCs and PTTCs is also critical to sustainability.
3. Khmer trainers in significant numbers and with significant skills to both teach and mentor the school directors over a significant amount of time during the three year period of the grant. These are the frontline people who will have most contact with the school directors and must be both real teachers and real mentors for them. Large amounts of supervision time and energy will be required by the project leadership to ensure their competence and commitment.
4. National consultant (with a part time international advisor) to coordinate, mentor, teach and provide the essential leadership for the entire program.
In order to make the model truly effective and efficient, additional resources are needed. Those additional resources will require increasing the Leadership national consultancy position from 1 to 2 positions, beginning in April, 2006. The increase in consultant support will allow the Leadership Development Program to dramatically improve both its quantity and quality of service for all of the secondary school directors in the 10 supported provinces. By improving the support for LSTs and trainers, it will ensure that the learning that happens in the workshops will be sustained over time and will increasingly affect leadership behaviors at school and in the community. It is hoped that, in addition to those immediate benefits to the project, the addition of a second consultant might also facilitate the extension of Leadership Development as an eventual part of the Teacher Training Department (TTD) as well as PTTCs and RTTCs. Finally, with a new Masters in Educational Leadership Program being developed at RUPP, a second consultant could help build natural links between practitioners (school directors, POE staff etc.) and those considering new forms of leadership ( students and faculty at RUPP). Leadership development can and should happen at multiple levels.
Proposed programmatic enhancements:
1. Increase support for the Leadership Support Team (LST) in every POE in every province.
In the current model, Leadership Support Teams are of two types: those organized and facilitated by VSO volunteers in three supported provinces (Kampot, Battambang and Banteay Meanchey) and those organized and run by POEYs without VSO support. VSO is taking significant leadership to create real support teams in the three provinces and to create other learning opportunities for school directors. For example, in one district in Battambang Province, a VSO volunteer is doing 8 weeks of leadership training with all 28 of the district's school directors using the curriculum from CESSP. But provinces without VSO support will have a much more difficult time creating authentic support for the professional development of the school directors, thus creating a real disparity in quality leadership support services among the 10 served provinces.
The creation and support of LSTs is very labor intensive. It takes the development of an ongoing relationship between the teams and the national consultant. VSO can supplement that relationship in their three provinces. But there is no help available in the other provinces. With the addition of a second consultant, double the number of LSTs can be supported at any one time. In addition, it will more than double the number of trainings and meetings that can be provided for the LSTs. This will help to solidify leadership development support in all of the POEYs . . . thus increasing the chances of sustainability.
- Additional money should be allocated to allow for increased travel and per diem for LST members so that they can visit, encourage and support school directors after the leadership workshops.
- Money should be allocated to support regular provincial LST meetings that share learning, share experiences, improve questioning techniques, learn new support techniques and more.
- With expanded support of the LSTs in every province, a few eager and effective PTTCs and RTTCs should become part of the team (as already exists in Kampot Province) and begin to consider offering leadership workshops for interested teachers and directors.
2. Increase support for trainers in the provinces.
- Consultants meet regularly with the trainers in the provinces and regionally. This is especially important to build their capacity in mentoring skills. A second national consultant guarantees that this can be done enough times to truly offer the kind of ongoing support the trainers will need.
- Money should be allocated for at lease two visits (per school) of school directors after each workshop by trainers.
- Money should be allocated for additional meetings, provincial and regional, of the trainers with the consultants to improve training skills, discuss problems etc.
3. Increase Leadership 2 & 3 to two workshops per year, maintaining the current practice of school directors creating learning plans for themselves at each workshop. With the increased support both from the LSTs and the trainers, the school directors will have a far greater incentive to translate their learning into their practice.
This enhancement of the Leadership Development Program offers the real possibility of sustaining a "leadership consciousness" in Cambodian education. With focused development at multiple levels of the system (Ministry, schools, POEs, DOEs, PTTCs, RTTCs, RUPP etc.) and with quality interventions done over an extended amount of time, authentic change is not only possible, it is likely.
In early January we conducted a "pilot workshop" of Leadership 1 with a group of 30 elementary principals. This was our chance to really see if we were on the right track. I must say that it proved to be one of the most frustrating and discouraging experiences I have had doing this work in Cambodia. Sarik taught his heart out . . . but it seemed that not much was working. I became aware that three of the school principals were barely literate. The vast majority had a very hard time reading and comprehending. In one section we used thirty minutes of silent reading. At least 90% of them needed to read out loud so that they could understand. We had material that was too difficult, timing that was too short and so many other things wrong that when it was over I felt like just giving up.
Sarik and I clearly needed to rethink many aspects of the workshop. And so we did major surgery. On January 12th we had another opportunity to try it out . . . at least part of it. We had arranged for a "reunion" workshop with the 40 principals that I had worked with in 2003-04. We invited all 40 and we had no idea how many would actually show up. Reaksmey, the wonderful translator who had worked with me that year, drove with Sarik and I to Angtasom to conduct the training. In 2003-04 all 40 attended the workshops because they had been selected by the Ministry and they had no choice. This time, however, it was up to them to attend or not. No "high up" official directed them. Amazingly, 30 of them arrived by motorcycle, from near and far, brushed off the dust and were ready and eager to learn. There was great delight in the reunion and in that classroom. One of them said the Khmer version of, "this is just like old times." The best news, by the end of the day, was that they really loved the experience and we knew our changes in content and process were significant improvements. We were back on track.
School principals grappling with the Leadership/ Management Game in Kampot Province. It is hard work but they have a lot of fun.
Our first Training of Trainers opportunity was January 17th-19th. Eighteen trainers, selected by the POEYs spent time with us learning the content and practicing the teaching. For the most part, I was pleased at the quality of the trainers. Most were quick and eager and some were even skilled. The week in Kampot taught us that our "revised" Leadership 1 module still needs work but it is getting close (I know, it will never be truly finished). We have a week to prepare for the next Training of Trainers in Battambang and then another in Kratie. And we just learned that the Secretary of State in the Ministry of Education that is in charge of this whole, countrywide, World Bank project (there are 5 secretaries of state in every ministry!) has expressed particular interest in Leadership and wants to attend the Training of Trainers in Battambang. That means much pomp and circumstance and ceremony and the end of our flying "below the radar". I am not sure how much he will like what we are teaching. Being creative and taking risks (our motto) may not be behaviors this government really wants its leaders practicing. This could get sticky now. And, it could be just what is needed.
A river of bicycles! Every lower and upper secondary school in the country looks like this, particularly in the countryside. Schools are farther from home so bicycles make it possible for children to attend school.
Kathy's arm is nearly healed and she and I went to Bali in late December for our son Brian's wedding. It was a reunion with our other children and our grandchildren. It was a beautiful island paradise, a wonderful gathering of family and a delicious rest. Net Wanna, the young man we have known since we first came here as volunteers in 2001 has been offered the head librarian position at the soon to be built Hun Sen Library at the Royal University of Phnom Penh. In preparation for that position, he will be attending the University of Washington School of Library Science on a full scholarship (Go, Huskies!!). So he will be in Seattle for two years earning his Master's degree. He will be the first Cambodian to become a certificated librarian. And Reaksmey, our translator in 2003-04, is back in school again working on his bachelor's degree and has just been hired as a translator at the Australian Embassy!! Both of them are doing very well. Kathy returns to Seattle Feb. 1st and I remain here until March 6th . . . then home for six months.
Enough for now! I will write again.
John Morefield was previously Principal of Hawthorne Elementary School in Seattle, Washington. He has worked with the Danforth Program at the University of Washington on programs for school principals. He is a cofounder and board member of Powerful Schools. He is also a former member of the Board of Directors of New Horizons for Learning.
You may email John Morefield at jmore44@yahoo.com.
© January 2006 New Horizons for Learning
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