As an English major, I always enjoyed planning and organizing my thoughts onto paper – creatively and argumentatively. As a teacher, one of my passions was helping students learn about the writing process – prewriting, writing, and revising. “It’s recursive, not linear,” was my challenge to students at the start of each new academic year. Then the fun would begin! It was gratifying to see each student make progress on his writing, as the year unfolded. I revel in the process myself, laboring to create and continuously revise meaningful pieces of poetry and professional essays. Often, I find myself happily caught in the tension of realizing I’m never really finished with a piece, never quite at a stopping point – I’m always returning to my writing to tweak, revise, and clarify. The tension has served me well in how I approach other endeavors. As a participant in a series of leadership seminars in the mid-nineties, I was introduced to the reflective exercise of writing case studies, then role playing the case studies during our seminar weeks together. Writing these case studies provided us time to reflect - creating brief fictional stories taken from our real-life experiences. During our seminars, we role played the case studies we created – using them as platforms to allow important issues to surface (in a non-threatening context) and to then wonder about solving moral, ethical, and leadership challenges that surfaced during the cases. Through this exercise, I began seeing how the written word has the potential of playing a formative role in helping leaders visualize real situations and real challenges couched in fictional scenarios. For me today, as an educational consultant, the case study continues to be an important tool I create and use in setting the context for same job conferences I help plan and implement – a tool that continues to challenge conference participants in much the same ways I was challenged. Below are some qualities of case studies our leadership teams develop and use as context-setting pieces for many of our regional leadership conferences: Conference Outcomes, Themes, and Topics: before writing a case study to be used at a conference, our leadership planning team carefully creates, reviews and revises participant outcomes, themes, and conference topics – making a specific list of items, which will be later weaved into the case study. It is not until after we finalize the agenda and schedule of activities that support the outcomes, themes, and topics, that we write the case study – which will be one of the first conference activities. A Day in the Life: as we write the narrative, we visualize one work day of one leader. The narrative unfolds as the leader’s day unfolds, and it typically begins when the leader is driving to work and parking in the parking lot of his or her school. Here’s an example of how a typical case study begins. This particular case study was created and used with educational technologists: “It is early Tuesday morning, and Xavier heads to Jesuit High School. He is especially tired today because he was up most of the night successfully retrieving some school network files that failed to back up after the school’s file systems crashed because the tech host space overheated again. When he arrives on campus, Xavier heads into school, noting the many students who are there early – their heads buried in their laptops.” Mission-Specific Language and Theory: as we write the case, in addition to including items from our list of outcomes, themes, and conference topics, we include key components of mission and vision. Here’s an example: “As Xavier leaves the meeting, he reflects. Approaching his work in his first year as director of Jesuit’s educational technology department – a growing department in the school – Xavier was excited about new leadership responsibilities. Though often these days, he prays for the understanding explicit in The First Principle and Foundation, ‘For everything has the potential of calling forth in us a deeper response to our life in God.’ What does that mean?” Here, the highlighted words (above) are foundational ideas for the organization we were working with. So, not only does the case address conference outcomes, themes, and topics, but also it is explicitly tied to the organization’s mission and vision. A Basic Introduction: after we draft the case study content, we add an introductory prompt that describes how we will use the case study during the conference. Here’s an example: “This case study is fiction. As you follow along during the morning’s reading, you may recognize some of your own responsibilities, challenges, qualities, and struggles. Some content may be familiar to you. Other content might be strange and new territory. This case study is the foundational platform upon which our work will evolve this week, in that it presents a variety of issues, topics, responsibilities, qualities, challenges, and questions as they relate to educational technology in our schools. It is intended to be a prompt to allow us to think about important issues. As you listen to and follow along in the case study reading this morning, write down key words or phrases, key ideas or questions, important concepts or buzz words that surface for you. Maybe what you hear makes you think of an issue you are having back at your school. Maybe it sparks you to ask a question. Jot down notes. Maybe what you write comes directly from something in the case. Maybe what you write was prompted by a thought that went through your head when you were listening. Maybe you make connections to last night’s opening presentation. Write notes. Note, readers will read slowly and pause often to allow you to notice words and write them down during the reading. When we finish the reading, we will talk about our reactions, our notes, and we will have a larger group conversation around the case study – as a pre-lection to today and the rest of the cohort gathering.” We set expectations and give directions. Guiding Questions: toward the end of the narrative, we pose questions for reflection and small or larger group conversation. Here are some examples:
Guiding questions help us in our post-reading conversation. We newsprint conversation responses, allowing participants to visual trends and refer to them as the conference continues. Finally, after we write, review, and revise the study, we break it into digestible pieces, and assign reading parts to conference participants. This activity during a conference is context-setting, allowing participants to explore issues, while reflecting and having conversations. We continuously return to the case study narrative as the conference unfolds. In the coming weeks I will upload various conference case studies for you to reference as samples that might prompt your own creative thinking.
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Pete MussoAssistant Principal, Curriculum & Instruction Archives
May 2022
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