Rule book for Education Leaders

Education Alumnus Publishes New Handbook for Superintendents   Monday, March 11, 2019 By Julia Mills Patrick Darfler-Sweeney, '10 takes an active interest in educational questions that affect K-12 students. As a former superintendent and lead negotiator in a school district, he understands the inevitable personal feelings involved when making decisions that shape the lives of children, teachers, and families. Through his many years as a servant leader, Darfler-Sweeney learned what it means to be a thoughtful and effective administrator. Recently, Darfler-Sweeney published a new book for aspiring superintendents, The Superintendent's Rulebook: A Guide to District-Level Leadership. The book serves as a professional development tool for education leaders that combines theory with real-world examples. The structure of the book had been inspired by the popular television series NCIS, where the main protagonist Gibbs develops a code to live by (in the form of rules) that...

12 Books You Need on Your Leadership Bookshelf By  Peter DeWitt  on  March 10, 2019 8:05 AM Every so often I love when I get into a space of learning where I can sit down, read a book, and take multiple notes because the book inspires me to read, reflect, and write. Sometimes it's due to writing a new book or blog, so it's a part of the research that I'm doing. Other times it may be that I want to give a presentation a makeover, and I'm looking for fresh perspectives to cite during a workshop or keynote.  Recently, I have become acquainted with some books that have not been out for long, and reacquainted with a few that I have read several times before. To be honest, I started this list with six books and then it quickly doubled. The books in the list are meant for anyone in a leadership position who is looking to put a focus on learning, build on collective ideas within their school, or are new to leadership and they're worried or insecure ab...

NBC Albany Affiliate (WNYT) TV Book Interview My sincere appreciation to Jill Konopka and WTEN (NBC Affiliate, Albany, NY) for granting me an opportunity to talk about The Superintendent's Rulebook https://wnyt.com/news/using-leadership-to-the-help-the-future-/5265074/

Saturday, March 2, 2019 6:40 am I will be interviewed about  The Superintendent's Rulebook: A Guide to District Level Leadership

AASA School Administrator Magazine Book Review for The Superintendent's Rulebook AASA School Administrator Magazine Book Review

Learning is Messy Long gone are the days of the idyllic classroom of straight rows, students sitting in alphabetic order and quietly working with pen and paper, with teacher firmly planted in the front of the room.  The assumption that we are blank slates to be written upon is naive at best and insulting at worst. Learning is messy, all the great educators from Socrates to Dewey to you have known this.  It is impossible for a human to have an exclusively original thought devoid of any past experiences.  Our design does not permit it. We are wired to have an experience, make mistakes or unintended advances and learn from those and other experiences we have had in our past that enable us to apply those lessons.  Meaning the only path to education is fraught with a ton of detours. So why is this controlled chaos such a problem so so many? In short, it is fear. Education and the academic institutions are and should be, our most dangerous centers of disru...

How Do We Solve the Administrator Shortage? By  Peter DeWitt  on  September 30, 2018 7:50 AM Today's guest post is written by Patrick Sweeney, Ed.D. is a recently retired superintendent from the Hunter-Tannersville School District (NY). Lately, we have been talking in education circles about the teacher shortage, but there is another shortage we should be just as concerned about. That shortage I'm referring to is the school administrator shortage. This has been an ongoing issue for over a decade, and NASSP reports, According to the Institute for Education Statistics, one in five principals working in schools in the 2011-12 school year left their school by the 2012-13 school year. Additional research shows that one out of every two principals is not retained beyond their third year of leading a school . Given this news, it's easy to see that the profession of the school administration is in a crisis. There are not enough qualified and suitable ...