From the Chief Administrator

I hope you have been able to spend extra time this summer with family and friends, enjoying travel or your favorite hobbies and engaging in new learning. Whatever your summer routines have been, I also hope you are feeling refreshed and excited about the school year ahead. 

The Agency’s leadership team has taken advantage of the time between school years to review data regarding our current results (everything from student outcomes, to technology to culture and leadership) and to learn together. An area of emphasis in our learning has come from the study of Patrick Lencioni’s book The Advantage. Lencioni’s premise is that organizational health is critical to improvement. 

Our data review and book study resulted in us rethinking a particular element of organizational health -- core values. Core values are defined as those behavioral traits or attributes that are at the heart of our identity and explain the way we go about doing our work. 

During the past several years, we have expressed our core values at Heartland AEA through three key words: Caring, Proactive and Collaborative. While working with talented and caring colleagues is frequently cited as one of the best things about working here, we also receive feedback that suggests we can get even better in using our core values to guide our actions. 

To help us bring these words to life, we gleaned themes from the staff focus group feedback and added ideas from our book study as well as personal reflections to develop the following descriptors: 

Caring: We show empathy for others in our personal interactions and daily work. 
We demonstrate caring by listening, engaging others, developing strong relationships and addressing challenges with respect. 

Proactive: We anticipate barriers, problem-solve solutions and identify opportunities. 
We strive to be proactive by innovating, learning from our failures and leveraging our successes. 

Collaborative: We build partnerships to achieve desired outcomes. 
We work collaboratively by sharing responsibility and accountability and by respecting diverse perspectives. 

We are striving as leaders to use our core values as anchors to guide our actions on a daily basis and invite you to do the same. Let’s support each other in demonstrating caring, being proactive and working collaboratively in service of the children, their families and school staffs we serve. Thank you for the work you do on behalf of Heartland AEA and best wishes as you begin another school year. 

Take care, 
Paula