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Thrive
How Schools Will Win the Education Revolution

Foreword by Yong Zhao



October 2019 | 224 pages | Corwin
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Become an irresistible school 


Our rapidly evolving world is dramatically impacting how we view schools. Fortunately, we have the knowledge to not only survive, but thrive during rapid change. Other organizations have faced these evolutionary disruptions for centuries. Thrive: How Schools Will Win the Education Revolution translates this knowledge for educators. Written by Grant Lichtman, a thought leader on the transformation of education, this book will help administrators understand:
The most important concepts in creating long-term success: value, strategy, and innovation 
The Five Big Tools of strategic change, to build both a comfort and capacity for change  
The reality of competing in an evolving marketplace 

Families are choosing from a growing menu of learning options. Your school needs a value proposition that shouts, "We are your best choice!" As an educator, you have an important role to play in winning the education revolution and making your school irresistible to your community.  
 

 
List of Figures
 
Foreword Yong Zhao
 
Acknowledgments
 
About the Author
 
Introduction
 
SECTION I. THE ROAD TO “THRIVE”: VALUE, STRATEGY, INNOVATION
 
1. A Few Big Guide Rails
 
2. Your School’s Value Proposition
 
3. What Is Strategy?
 
4. Innovation: The Link Between Value and Strategy
 
5. Shifting From Strategic Planning to Strategic Design
 
SECTION II. THE FIVE BIG TOOLS OF STRATEGIC CHANGE FOR SCHOOLS
 
6. Big Tool #1 : Kotter(+)—Key Steps to Effectively Changing Schools
 
7. Big Tool #2: Design-Based Practice
 
8. Big Tool #3: The Time-Tested Logic Model
 
9. Big Tool #4: The School Innovation Stairway
 
10. Big Tool #5: Understanding the School System
 
SECTION III. START BUILDING
 
11. Finding the Values of Your School Community
 
12. Do You Know the Jobs Your School Is Hired to Do?
 
13. Lead Like an Architect
 
14. Finding Your School’s North Star
 
15. Building Cultures of Innovation in Schools
 
16. Learning from Other Successful Organizations
 
17. Measuring Innovation
 
18. Inevitable Obstacles
 
19. Pushing Our Horizons
 
Appendix I. Activities for Your Teams
 
Appendix II. Schools, Networks, Conferences and Book Suggestions to Help Discover “The Possible”
 
References
 
Index

Imagine you are climbing a mountain with a large group of people. Hard challenges lie ahead.Now imagine that you have the wisest and most capable, ingenious, clever, and informed trail guide you’ve ever met at your side, helping you plan and execute your climb. You feel better,don’t you? If your “mountain-climb” is redesigning a school to serve students in this vastly challenging world, Grant Lichtman is that guide and this book is your trail map. Don’t begin your climb without it.

Andy Calkins
Next Generation learning Challenges

It’s not enough to build some “new model of education.” Change happens faster today than at any other time in history. What we need in education is a cultural and organizational shift that matches the intensity of the future we face. We need a culture of innovation and iteration, where we constantly build, launch, measure, and iterate the best learning and teaching practices we create. In this book, Grant Lichtman has laid out the exact future our schools face and what schools need to do to face this future head on. More than ever, we need a culture of innovation and iteration in our schools, and this book provides you with the tools you need to build and maintain a culture of innovation. Every school leader needs to read this book and use the tools to transform their schools to help students build the knowledge, skills, and abilities to take on the dramatic future they face!

Jaime Casap
Google

Grant Lichtman shares another outstanding book for school leaders, with clear, actionable ideas about how we can get our school organizations to thrive. This is a must-read for administrator and community-group book studies.

Dr. Michael Lubelfeld

In Thrive, Grant Lichtman helps us understand that education is at a crossroads in our world. So that our schools do not go the way of the dinosaurs, he lays out the tools we need to manage strategic change and evolve our school systems to meet both the changing needs of our students and the changing demands of our society.

Dr. Nick Polyak

Grant Lichtman has done it again, this time setting the stage for one of the most important books for school leaders in our time. Lichtman provides insights and actionable tools for school leaders to navigate the dramatically changing future and role of schools to keep up in the era of school choice and to find relevance in a rapidly changing world. As a principal, this is exactly the type of book our colleagues have been waiting for!

Dr. Eric Chagala
Vista Innovation Design Academy

As our society changes, so must our schools. Grant Lichtman has written a necessary book to help  schools to develop their road maps to becoming more modern, more relevant, and more powerful places for all who inhabit them.

 
Chris Lehmann
Science Leadership Academy Schools

In Thrive, Grant Lichtman brings together the best minds in education, business, research, history, philosophy, and also the futurists for a dynamic dialogue about “what is possible.”  If you want to find out what “winning” looks like in school innovation, there isn’t a better collection of  actual resources or real-time examples than right here! Thank you for making your journey available to all of us Grant!

 
Dr. David Miyashiro
Cajon Valley Union School District

Once again, Grant Lichtman uses the power of the keyboard to provoke teachers, school leaders, and policymakers to think differently about schools and, most important, student learning. Thrive left me feeling optimistic about what the future of school can be for all students—
regardless of school type or zip code—with some easy “next day” strategies alongside some difficult strategic choices that all schools will need, not just to survive but also to thrive in the future.

Glenn Whitman

Grant Lichtman has written a powerful book that will help any district or system start to make change. This book will challenge your thinking in a good way. Grant breaks the book down into three sections that help make the material easy to understand. Each section has meaningful tools to help school leaders start to implement changes to impact their students. This should be a book used at the university level to inspire future leaders to enter this profession with a changed mindset.

Travis Lape
Harrisburg School District, Sioux Falls, SD

This book comprises the magic trifecta of inspiration, practicality, and a kick in the pants when needed! If you are designing and implementing transformative change in your school, this book is your indispensable source for big ideas, practical tools, and heartfelt inspiration.

Julie Wilson
Institute for the Future of Learning
Key features

The book is broken into three sections that are loaded with examples and stories from educators, schools and business. 

Part I: Will define and bring together the three most important concepts in creating long-term success: value, strategy, and innovation.

Part II: Covers the Five Big Tools of strategic change.  There are more than this, but these five proven tools are a great place to start.  There are concrete, relatively simple ways for you and your school team to use these tools to build both a comfort and capacity for change that can improve learning and create more excitement about what your school has to offer.

Part III: Deals with the pragmatic reality of how to compete in an evolving marketplace of customer-families who have choices about how and where their kids will be educated.  In these chapters I share what works for schools as well as lessons from other businesses that are very different from schools.

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