February 2016: School Administrator

February 2016 School Administrator Cover

The enigma of public engagement: leading through a maze of mistrust among public education's key constituencies

Advertisement

Additional Articles

Staff

Editor's Note

Connectedness

Does anyone espouse the notion of 鈥渢he connected educator鈥 better at the moment than Michael Lubelfeld, superintendent in Deerfield, Ill.?

The day he came on board, July 1, 2013, one of his first acts was to unblock the district鈥檚 use of Twitter 鈥渢o solve the problem of disconnection.鈥 Through the district hashtag (#Engage109), teachers and administrators now show the public via photos, videos, text and links to other relevant content what learning looks like in his 3,000-student, K-8 district or, as he puts, 鈥渨hat innovation means in real life and in real time.鈥

Lubelfeld has become a champion of social media use by superintendents. He鈥檚 a comfortable user of tools unfamiliar to me (Remind or Periscope anyone?) and co-founder of the monthly 鈥渟uptchat鈥 discussion forum on Twitter.

He also doesn鈥檛 hold back when addressing colleagues. In a thoughtful essay for the Discovery Education blog last July, he wrote: 鈥淸I]n some school systems, the top leadership still does not understand or value current methods of communication. Their relative ignorance about social connectivity can become quite detrimental to a school system in search of change, innovation and leadership.鈥

Lubelfeld鈥檚 contribution in this issue is the lead authorship on a short article about the 91制片 Digital Consortium.

Jay P. Goldman
Editor, School Administrator
 703-875-0745
 jgoldman@aasa.org
 

Advertisement

Advertisement