By David Vitrano

L’Observateur

LAPLACE – Leadership teams from each of St. John the Baptist Parish’s public schools met last week at Emily C. Watkins Elementary School to continue a series of training sessions begun this school year.

With the goal of introducing concrete leadership strategies, last week’s session was led by Joanne Quinn, an international consultant, and Dr. Clif St. Germain, who have taken the reins on the program created by renowned educator Michael Fullan.

St. Germain said the session was aimed at “developing greater precision in teaching, especially interactive and literacy.”

“This is a really good, promising group of principals,” said St. Germain, who meets with the district’s principals once a month. “I would predict good things.”

He also complimented Superintendent Courtney Millet’s teacher-focused methods.

According to St. Germain, the program, dubbed “Motion Leadership,” strives to implement strategies in four categories — districtwide coherence, capacity building, leadership development and creating learning communities.

Millet said the strategy appears to be working well.

“Our main goal is to build our coherency across the district,” she said.

Millet, to her credit, strives to never lose sight of the ultimate goal, however.

“It’s not about programs. It’s about people,” she noted.

Even the state Department of Education, which funded the event, has taken notice of the strides made by the St. John school district in the area of leadership development. In the state’s Race to the Top application, St. John’s efforts are singled out. The passage reads in part, “The result will be a changed learning environment at a classroom level that will result in a collective district capacity to identify and implement reforms un a manner and scale that even the finest state DOE operation could only hope to match.”

And while the work done in these sessions is beneficial in and of itself, it is only when the strategies learned are shared with the entire school that their true worth becomes known.

“The information that we gain from here, we implement at our faculty meetings,” said Watkins Principal Toni Robinet. “It’s been a very beneficial piece that drives our curriculum.”