Dream Team

Lasting school improvement often depends less on one visionary educator than on a group that works well together. Aaron Tait and Dave Faulkner write for teams that want to form around a shared commitment to students, who believe change should start inside the school, and who are ready to do the hard work together. Drawing on ten leadership teams in urban, suburban, and rural schools across the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, the authors describe how those teams operated.

The book lays out what the authors call the Change Leader Journey, a sequence that runs from assembling the team and analyzing the problem, through generating solutions and piloting them, to promoting and evaluating the results. Along the way, Tait and Faulkner offer candid, sometimes bold guidance on each stage, along with practical ideas and tools meant to support transformational leadership without sacrificing classroom quality or the well-being of the people involved.

Their approach is built for different kinds of teams, whether members are eager risk-takers, careful planners, or somewhere between. Readers can use it to decide where their school should head, to build a more collaborative and creative culture, and to develop solutions that fit their students.