Articles
Building Leadership Capacity: To ASCD Chicago…and Beyond!
Friday, February 4th, 2011
by Ryan Land
Last spring at one of our Leadership Team meetings (comprised of principal, vice principals, department heads), I pitched the idea of a trip to Chicago to attend ASCD’s 2010 Teaching and Learning Conference. The conference theme was “Closing the Learning Gap” and the emphasis on teaching and learning in high stakes times, while working with at-risk learners in their many forms, seemed like it would be useful and engaging for the instructional leaders in our school. I am the principal of R.D. Parker Collegiate in Thompson, Manitoba. In my second year as principal, I know both the legend and the reality of our context for teaching and learning, and I truly felt this would be an opportunity worth getting excited about. We have been working with the Manitoba School Improvement Program for a number of years, and this was to be the catalyst for building leadership capacity within our recently reinvigorated department head structure. Add to the mix the fact that it was looking like the bulk of the funding would come from outside the school-based budget, and it was starting to feel like an ever-elusive win-win.
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Etruscan Evenings, the sequel to Cairo Diary, follows the life of Justine Jenner after she is expelled from Egypt in the wake of discovering the controversial diary of the Virgin Mary. In Italy, the anthropologist confronts
Cairo Diary: An Egyptian Fable is a tale of two women 2000 years apart: the Virgin Mary, living with her family in Old Cairo; and Dr. Justine Jenner, an anthropologist. During a violent earthquake, Justine becomes trapped in the crypt under St. Sergius Church, the cave that served as the Egyptian home to the Holy Family. When the shaking stops, the diary of the Virgin Mary lies at her feet. When Linda visited this ancient crypt, she was inspired to write Cairo Diary: An Egyptian Fable, her first historical novel.


