History of the Center for Next Generation Leadership
The roots of the Center for Next Generation Leadership trace to an evening in Danville in the Fall of 2009 hosted by Carmen Coleman in which, as a new superintendent, she was looking to cast a new vision for the district and hosting a community forum. Tom Jones, then of AdvancEd, heard about this intriguing new superintendent and invited the brand new Dean of the College, Mary John O'Hair, and a 2nd year professor, Justin Bathon, along for the evening in Danville. Dean O'Hair had recently been hired as Dean and tasked by then President Lee Todd with making the college more relevant to schools. Based on her experience in Oklahoma having built and led the K-20 Center at the University of Oklahoma, she established the P20 Innovation Lab which provided some startup funding for different efforts in the College, one of which would go on to become Next Gen.
Carmen as Superintendent in 2009 in Danville.
That night Carmen provided an open door to a reconceptualization of school, particularly of the learner experience of school. There was a moment when Carmen showed the "Did You Know 2.0" video produced by Scott McLeod, a close friend and collaborator of Justin's and on the way home some of the very first seeds of how the College might support work like this were planted. Were our schools preparing kids for their futures? If not, how might the experience of school change to let them build the broader skills they would need to face their complex, global, digital futures?
During the next year, Linda France was hired to lead the effort to operate a year-long Academy model based loosely on the Phase 1 model from Oklahoma. Linda called the professional development series ... the Next Gen Leadership Academy and the first group of school partners joined for a Fall 2010 start. We planned and implemented 7 days over the course of the year with the support of local schools in the Bluegrass and the core operating model of Next Gen was born. In 2020-21, we will celebrate our 10th Cohort.
Founding Director Linda France
From Founding Director Linda France in 2019: “As Next Gen has grown and expanded over the last 9 years, the vision for a P20 collaborative network connecting higher education's scholarly research to applications in P12 districts, schools, and classrooms remains the same. As with implementing most worthy dreams, getting started is one of the hardest parts second only to keeping the focus on the goals as progress is made along the way. The actual design for Next Gen began with lots of how-to ideas tossed on to a whiteboard with daily additions and erasers but with a never-ending passion for leading change. Key to bringing the vision to life was creating a Next Gen design team made up of university professors Justin Bathon, Tom Guskey, Joan Mazur, Gerry Swan, and quickly adding P12 innovative leaders--Janet Granada, Buddy Berry, Travis Hamby, Carmen Coleman, and Lu Young. At the end of every design team meeting, a host of ideas, critical feedback, suggestions, and questions had to be considered, prioritized, shaped, and turned into workable plans. Many key voices, including student-voice, have been added to the design of Next Gen over the years. I could not be more thrilled about the opportunity the Next Gen offers to change leaders who realize the need to redesign schools and the opportunity to hold hands and stick together in doing so!
The early years of Next Gen were a lot of fun. We were definitely learning as we went, as were our School District partners. Those early days of change were exhilarating as we stepped beyond the traditions and norms of school as we knew it. For several years, everyone received a copy of Tony Wagner’s Global Achievement Gap as a starting point for our conversations. More importantly, we visited a lot of schools outside Kentucky and began to see real alternatives that several districts in Kentucky began to pursue.
Some of those very early sparks that persist still today include:
While these small district or startup schools could change quickly, the real strength of Next Gen began to build over time as our public school districts began to implement Next Gen practices at the district and school levels. As the first 5 year map to the right shows, district-level investments in Next Gen began happening all across Kentucky. As these districts began to implement, an innovation network emerged across the states with many districts making serious and long term commitments to these emerging models that relied on constructivist foundations. Many people have helped throughout the years and we brought many national voices into Kentucky to help us. Eventually, as we grew in strength, we relied less and less on external voices and more and more of our school visits were based within the state as districts were actively sharing with each other the best practices and successes. Over the years, Next Gen has worked with over 70 districts in Kentucky including a deep, long running relationship with Jefferson County Public Schools in Louisville. In the video below, Justin shares a little on how that growth unfolded and the impact it had on the learning experience for children.
Over time, Next Gen evolved and the topics we covered morphed from a heavy tech. emphasis to more questions around instruction, student voice, assessment and other now core elements of what is generally referred to as Deeper Learning. Inevitably, leadership changed over the years and as Linda stepped back, Carmen Coleman joined the team to lead the Center with Lu Young joining shortly thereafter. With Carmen leaving to join Jefferson County Public Schools as their Chief Academic Officer, Lu formally took the helm and helped to steer Next Gen to a broader array of services and a stronger financial footing. Neomia Hagans-Flores arrived to help us improve the quality of our operations and our educator facing programs and has since taken a leading role in our Dual Credit program. Next Gen even transformed from the “lab” concept to a formal Center within the UK College of Education, even taking up residence in our own building at 641 Maxwelton Court on UK’s campus.
In 2019 the Center was growing again with the addition of the UK Next Gen Scholars Dual Credit project from the UK Provost’s office and the team expanded again, adding Karen Perry, the former Director of Personalized Learning from Henry County, Georgia, and our office administrator Jenny Holly.
Today, Next Gen leads a variety of projects, hosts annual events, and leads academic programs through the Department of Educational Leadership Studies. While our portfolio has expanded, the mission has never really changed from that first spark back in 2009 on the drive back from Danville. Our mission then, as it is now, is to upgrade learning systems to transform the student experience.
