May 8th, 2008 - Letter from Dr. McCammon Regarding Cisco Systems Case Study

I spent a few days last week in San Jose, California at the Cisco Systems campus participating in a new National Superintendents Leadership Network which comes out of a newly created partnership between the Schlechty Center and Cisco Systems. Cisco Systems, one of the largest global companies located in the Silicon Valley became involved with the center after they (Cisco) donated $40 million to help rebuild many Katrina ravaged Mississippi and Louisiana schools. Their approach was to ensure that as the schools were rebuilt through their 21st Century Schools Initiative, they were built around a quality systems approach such as ours. This led to them selecting the Standard Bearer and consequently the Schlechty approach as a model and an organization to partner with.

They (Cisco) are in the process of writing (and documenting within) a white paper (a series of case studies) about quality systems change and how focusing on engagement throughout the system impacts students and changes pedagogy in education. After hearing what we have been about for the past eight years and in reading the center’s case study about us, they have requested a visit and some interview time with some of our folks. The visit will be led by Dr. Peg Maddocks, the Director of the 21st Century Schools Initiative in Cisco’s Global Education Services Division.  She will have with her a contract writer hired by Cisco to capture their experiences in the “White Paper”. This will be similar to the visit by the Video Journal of Education team and the visit by Lennie Hay that resulted in the case study entitled: Changing the Quality of Student Experiences: The Fife Way.

They will be meeting with a number of staff from around the district. They will also be getting out into some of the schools as well as they want to see firsthand the “Walls That Teach” , the student work as well as the overall climate of our buildings and to meet as many staff as possible.

This should be another great opportunity for us to do some quality self reflection about the work that we have going on around here and for it to be recognized by a top ten Fortune 500 company is something that I think we can all be proud of once again. This combined with our upcoming Standard Bearer Celebration May 15th and the education summit on May 20th should provide quite a showcase of events for the end of another fine year.

Thanks again,

Steve

Dr. Steve McCammon

Superintendent

Fife School District No. 417

Standard Bearer School District

Phone (253) 517-1000