Hathaway Brown

September 2011

Welcome to the inaugural issue of Innovations, a newsletter designed to inform independent school educators about current trends and best practices in schools around the globe. Innovations was conceived not only as a way to keep educational innovators up to speed with breakthrough ideas, but also to help them stay connected with each other. I hope that you will consider this a community project and you'll share your opinions, insights, and content with us.

I'm pleased to announce that we're simultaneously launching a vibrant digital innovation marketplace called IdeaStore. Read more about it below.

In This Issue:

IdeaStore

Education Innovation Summit 2011

Mini-Bennington Courses at
Canterbury School

HB's Faculty Alumni Network

In this first issue, we've assembled information about a few initiatives related to Hathaway Brown we thought you might enjoy. In the next edition, we'd love to publish material about you and your school as well. Email submissions to innovation@hb.edu.

With best wishes for a happy and productive new school year,

 
Bill Christ
Hathaway Brown Head of School

 All independent school educators are invited to the grand opening of IdeaStore: Hathaway Brown's Innovation Marketplace. This new online venue is chock-full of great ideas and insights culled from forward-thinking teachers and administrators from around the country. Each section of the site contains information crafted to inspire you.

Hot & Fresh - important educational announcements, news items and promising brainstorms
Whole Brain Cereal  - scholarly observations and insightful analyses of educational trends and current events
Organic Produce - new ideas and inspiring initiatives created and nurtured by teachers and administrators
12 Items or Less - a quick rundown of noteworthy perspectives and cutting-edge programs

IdeaStore also contains a special forum section where site visitors are encouraged to network with each other. Visit www.ideastore.hb.edu and add your voice to what promises to be an exciting and dynamic conversation.

 

November 4-5
Education Innovation Summit 2011
Sustainability Through Strength
Keynote by Jaimie Cloud, the Cloud Institute for Sustainability Education
Appreciative Inquiry Workshop facilitated by AI co-founder Ronald Fry, Ph.D.
Panel Discussion with Sustainability Experts in Educational Institutions

Overview | Program | Presenters | Accommodations | Register Now

Join us for the Education Innovation Summit 2011: Sustainability Through Strength, a two-day event that includes a hands-on workshop for creating real, useful sustainability program blueprints for schools. Through the revolutionary Appreciative Inquiry (AI) method of positive change, teams of educators from around the country will have the tools they need to shift their governing paradigms from surviving to thriving. Pioneered at Case Western Reserve University’s Weatherhead School of Management, AI helps practitioners capitalize on their strengths and mobilize assets to propel their organizations forward. The process has been widely employed around the world by schools, corporations, government agencies, and environmental scientists and it recently was heralded by NAIS President Pat Bassett in the new NAIS Handbook on Marketing Independent Schools. AI has been used successfully by the United Nations, the U.S. Navy, Verizon, and John Deere, among numerous others.

To maximize the effectiveness of this workshop, space will be limited to 100 participants. Schools are encouraged to send teams of three to six people who will be charged with developing the framework for positive change around a sustainability topic. The Education Innovation Summit offers a perfect opportunity to connect great minds at all levels of your organization. Ideal attendees include heads of school, facilities managers, fundraising professionals, business managers, teachers, and even students. Visit www.hb.edu/summit11 to learn more and secure your spot today. Hurry! Space is quickly filling up.

College Comes to Campus

Bob Schantz, High School Director, Canterbury School - Fort Wayne, Indiana

I feel confident in saying that over time Canterbury School will see a multitude of positive effects stemming from ideas generated by speakers at the 2010 Education Innovation Summit. One idea in particular has already taken root. In view of Liz Coleman's keynote on the new liberal arts at Bennington College, we have decided to do a mini-Bennington series of courses.

These classes will be multi-disciplinary and team-taught by members of different departments. They will focus on contemporary problems and examine possible ways to address the problems. Our hope is that students will need to draw on previous learning and find themselves exploring new, relevant areas of inquiry. We are very excited about the opportunity, and if it is successful, we hope that it will continue to grow. I have little doubt that our experiment will begin thought about how we teach many of our traditional courses.

 Faculty Alumni Network

Bill Christ, Head of School, Hathaway Brown - Shaker Heights, Ohio 

This summer, a recently retired Hathaway Brown math teacher met me for lunch to say that he had no intention of severing his ties with the school. And he gave me an idea: to launch a Faculty Alumni Network that would reconnect these important members of our community with each other and with HB. Whether they spent one year or 30 at HB, the influence of these educators in the hearts and minds of their students is immeasurable. So this month we reached out to nearly 400 teachers and administrators who were at one time employed here. We invited them to tell us how they'd like to structure this exciting new partnership by way of an online survey. So far, the response has been wonderful. Many of our former colleagues have requested to be kept in the loop about daily school life by email and through our alumnae magazine. And as an added perk, several have volunteered to help us out with our yearly Admissions Open House events, and have offered to tutor students, act as mentors to new teachers, and present guest lectures on a variety of topics. I'm looking forward to the ways in which this network will evolve over time.

How do you keep in touch with past members of your faculty? Send us an email and we'll share your responses.

Please direct submissions for Innovations or IdeaStore to innovation@hb.edu. We will make every effort to include your content, but please note that it may be edited for length and clarity. Digital imagery also is welcome.




Hathaway Brown School  ••  Girls K-12/Coed Early Childhood
19600 North Park Boulevard  ••  Shaker Heights, Ohio 44122  ••  216.932.4214
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