Haiti Educational Leadership Capacity Building

For the past 5+ years, I have been working with school principals in Haiti.  More than 500 principals have gone through training courses with me. I feel like I have learned much more from my colleagues in Haiti than I have been able to impart. Frankly, it has been a shared journey learning from each other.

This week, I received exciting news.  I had put an application together to receive some seed money to develop a leadership program for Haiti utilizing digital technology. The application was approved and I'm now putting together the components.  We'll be starting with five administrators, three in Haiti and two in Ontario. The concept includes a number of components:

1. Coordinating leadership resources (videos, wikis, web-links, pdfs) which will be developed by Bruce Alexander (school principal @ Keatsway PS in Waterloo) and myself with support from the Ontario Principal Council.  Conestoga College tech students will develop a video to accompany each leadership module and we anticipate using a platform developed by ClevrU, another Waterloo-based company.
2. Principals will have an iPad or Blackberry to access the materials.  They will also use the device to have the ability to be in real-time communication with an educational partner (either in Haiti or Canada).

I'm excited about what I'm calling "reciprocal mentoring."  The partnership will support the development of leadership abilities in Haitian principals who are often separated geographically (or economically) from the opportunity to access training.  It will also support the development of global perspective building in Canadian principals.

I will be piloting the project this winter and spring with a trip or two planned to Haiti to study the effectiveness of the model in April/May.  More details to follow!