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"That’s the story of much of this country.  We love the platitudes.  Children are our future, the promise of tomorrow.  They are our chance at immortality.  But consistently, this is a nation that loves the notion of children yet really doesn’t like the reality of kids." - Anna Quindlen in "moms shouldn’t go it alone . . ." Parenting, June/July 2003

ON LEADING IN A DIVERSE WORLD

In her new book, Learning to Lead (St Paul: Redleaf Press, 2003; www.redleafpress.org), Debra Ren-Etta Sullivan shares this insight on leadership in a diverse early childhood setting:

"Becoming an effective leader means understanding how the world makes sense to others as well as understanding how the world makes sense to you.  Your ability to do this as a teacher makes your work with children and their families more effective.  You know that trying to get a three-year-old to understand that two different-sized containers can hold the same amount of water is futile.  To the child, the tall glass holds more water than the shallow dish.  The ability to understand the child's perspective as well as our own gives us the opportunity to create bridges for the child between his world and ours.  Leadership is similar.  Your ability to understand another's perspective allows you to offer solutions that make sense to others as well as you.  If you suggest solutions that only make sense to you, you will be telling others that their perceptions are wrong.  Leadership is about solutions that take other perspectives into account.

"Leadership in a diverse ECE work environment is a mutual process of leaders and followers working toward a goal, learning from each other, and drawing on the strengths they hold collectively as a result of their life experiences.  The challenge for new leaders is to unlearn old mind-sets and concentrate on the potential and creativity diversity brings."
 

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