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SEHS


icon of a calendarFebruary 16, 2018

icon of a pencilBy Emell Derra Adolphus

Educational Exchange

The Galileo-Saudi Arabia Leadership Project in the School of Education and Human Services puts Oakland University's teacher leadership on an international stage

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Kevin Fales

This month, Oakland University’s School of Education and Human Services will welcome a blended cohort of 50 Saudi Arabian teachers, principals and administrators in the Galileo-Saudi Arabia Leadership Project. Over the course of a year, the educators will learn as students, studying the ins and outs of the American school system and how strong leadership can transform their country’s educational landscape.

“They are here to learn as much as they can about high quality American educational strategies,” explains Suzanne Klein, assistant professor of organizational leadership and coordinator of the school immersion segment of the Galileo-Saudi Arabia Leadership Project. “This includes teaching, assessment, professional development for their staff, and what leadership looks like for those who have more formal roles.”

In Saudi Arabia, the educators are serving a small part in a larger vision. Last year, Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman unveiled his Saudi 2030 Transformation Plan, which included goals to develop the country’s service sectors such as health, infrastructure, tourism, recreation and education.

After a call for proposals to universities across the country, Oakland was chosen with a handful of other universities to provide educators with a learning experience because of the value placed on leadership and shared responsibility, Klein explains.

“Leading from every chair is the way that I describe it. The idea that it’s not just the formal leadership structure but the informal leaders in the building who can develop change,” she says. “I think it is a bold move from the government to send them to gain these experiences and bring what they have learned back to Saudi Arabia to start the change.”

“"Leading from every chair is the way that I describe it. The idea that it's not just the formal leadership structure but the informal leaders in the building who can develop change," ”

Suzanne Klein

assistant professor of organizational leadership, coordinator

of the school immersion segment of the Galileo-Saudi Arabia Leadership Project

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Kevin Fales

This year’s cohort is the Galileo-Saudi Arabia Leadership Project’s third wave of participants. The first two cohorts stayed for 6-month terms. After reporting stellar results, the Saudi Arabian government increased the terms to a year.

“I lovingly call them the pioneers,” says Klein, about the first wave of participants. “They were not only encountering jetlag but also facing the realities of making arrangements for living in a foreign country with their families,” she explains, which included finding living quarters, schools for their children, doctors, grocery stores, and acclimating to a drastically different climate.

“Most of them have never seen snow before,” Klein adds.

The Galileo-Saudi Arabia Leadership Project consists of four primary components: a program orientation, comprehensive ESL classes, school immersion experiences and a learning seminar each week called Campus Fridays, hosted by Cindy Carver, associate professor of Organizational Leadership.

“The curriculum shifts as participants gain English skills and familiarity with American classrooms,” explains Carver. “These Fridays allow rich conversation and the opportunity to have guest speakers and dialogues that require extra time for thinking and processing how new ideas are changing them as educational leaders.”

The first idea to grasp is the distinction between the American educational system and the Saudi system, she explains.

“Later in the program, we invite faculty to share their expertise on topics that range from reading, promotion and high-leverage instructional practices, to handling difficult behaviors in the classroom,” says Carver. “Constant throughout is an intentional effort to model effective adult learning strategies, e.g., establishing group norms for how the group will work together.”

The cohort visits local schools and spends six to eight weeks job shadowing an education professional separately. This experience is supplemented by class courses focused on the evidence-based practices studied in the SEHS Galileo Institute for Teacher Leadership.

“There were three different kinds of experiences that they had. Then there were some common experiences that they had on Fridays and on other visits with me,” explains Klein. “When I took them for school immersion, we did visits and we used the national leadership standards to help them view schools through the prism of their vision, values and goals.”

At the center of the project is the idea of exploring new educational concepts while improving on old concepts in the process. “We are blurring the lines,” says Klein. And each wave of the project presents a new opportunity to improve upon the process.

“The Saudi Arabian government loved our excellent delivery and curriculum in the ESL portion,” explains Anne Donato, Ph.D., director of the Galileo-Saudi Arabia Immersion Project. “They felt our strategies; leadership of the curriculum and growth of the participants was exceptional and were very pleased with the high quality and exceptional results that we provided.”

Through collaboration, the ultimate goal is to support creating a new set of leadership skills and best educational practices that will move across the globe to benefit students and educational leaders in Saudi Arabia, explains Donato.

“We are all trying to do what is best for children, what is best for education, what is best to make educational delivery richer, deeper and more robust,” she says. “To learn from each other, to see other points of view, to watch an educational approach be applied in several different ways reinforces for me that the more voices we have at the table, the more diversity we share, the clearer and brighter our educational vision will be for our children — and for us as educators as we move to new levels of leadership.”

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