If you frequently troll the policy wing of the ASCD Web site or browse your membership materials, you should be familiar with some of the ASCD position statements—better known as "What We Believe." From the whole child to closing the achievement gap, these statements catalogue what policies and practices ASCD believes will ensure each child's access to educational equity and excellence.
However, it's not enough to simply believe in a policy or practice—you have to see it into being. Without passionate leaders to shepherd initiatives from position statement to actual practice, there's no wide-scale improvement in education.
Enter the ASCD membership (all 170,000 of you), and more recently and formally, the Emerging Leaders Program. This new program is designed to nurture a new generation of ASCD leaders who will influence policy and practice, and further the realization of ASCD positions.
Beyond the Lone Voice
Selected through a rigorous application process, the 14 emerging leaders are your peers. They may be a bit younger—their experience in education ranges from 5 to 15 years—but as an ensemble, they represent rural, urban, and suburban teachers and administrators from a variety of ethnic backgrounds. And like a lot of educators, they are pretty new to policy advocacy.
For Canadian Lori Cooper, one of the biggest challenges of being an emerging leader is seeing herself "beyond that of a lone voice. I know I am not alone when it comes to advocacy." Another emerging leader, April Jordan, agrees that there are many strong advocates in education, but often those "other voices" are not heard in a forum where change is possible. For Jordan, key to creating comfort levels with policy advocacy are opportunities to try out different leadership roles and increased exposure to education politics. With that kind of practice, she believes she can be a catalyst for changing policy that affects the outcomes of poor and minority students.
Partners in Policy
The 14 emerging leaders are each paired with a veteran ASCD leader to coach them through their leadership journey. Donald Kachur, a professor at Illinois State University and executive director of the Illinois ASCD, is the leadership coach of emerging leaders Angela Chapman and Rose Chu. He's encouraging his emerging leaders to develop their own professional strategic plans. "Particularly," he adds, "what areas of knowledge or skills do they wish to augment in preparation for their leadership roles, and how can the emerging leader-coach relationship evolve as they take steps toward their goals?"
Bev Inglis adds that, in coaching Teresa Dempsey, she wants to be a colleague who will listen, encourage, and sustain the passion for progress already evident in her emerging leader.
Going to the Mat
The sort of professional dialogue and reflection that Kachur and Inglis advocate jibes with Cooper's advice to any aspiring education leader: "You have to know what you're willing to ‘go to the mat’ for," she says. Good leaders "first know themselves—their values, attitudes, and beliefs regarding education," says Cooper. Then they can prioritize which policy to pursue the loudest. For example, emerging leader Peter Badalament clamors for multiple modes of assessment and funding for teacher quality. Cooper seconds that. Jordan hopes to raise a ruckus over the shortcomings of No Child Left Behind, to improve the collection and interpretation of student data. ASCD believes these young voices will carry.
