Dr. Charles M. Ivory

Open Doors to Open Minds: Strategic Planning Through Community Engagement Dr. Charles M. Ivory

In education administration, the key to a successful organization is engaging your staff, governance boards, and constituent communities. Successful engagement can bring about advancement and reward, while failure to do so can result in struggling schools and even loss of position. In this guide for school leaders, Dr. Charles M. Ivory makes the case for engagement through personal anecdotes drawn from his forty-six-year career in education, serving in roles from teacher to superintendent of schools. He advises building relationships with each of the various communities that interact with the educational organization, from administration and teachers to general citizenry and students. Ivory addresses not only student-teacher relationships but also those with and among staff, parents, and the community as a whole. Developed properly, this level of engagement can lead to improvement and change, promote compatibility and inclusivity, and enable greater student achievement. Open Doors to Open Minds shares leadership behaviors that build the community consensus needed to promote expectations for higher student achievement-a new insight into what drives school improvement.