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Educational leadership is a
calling that requires professional development, occasional mentoring and a
network of fellow professionals that can assist in getting one through certain
dark days and periods. For many years, the Institute for the Development of
Educational Activities,
known as I/D/E/A to its thousands of participants
fulfilled that need for educational administrators.
During
the latter stages of the 2003 I/D/E/A conferences, word spread that the
organization was folding and that the annual conferences as well as
peripheral activities that the organization had become famous for were no
longer in the future. To those who had religiously participated, including
fellows who had attended for twenty to twenty five years, this vacuum was
seen as a major difficulty. Thus even before the end of the I/D/E/A/
conference, minds were working toward the formation of the replacement group.
During
the winter of 2004, the Fellowship for the Improvement of Educational
Leadership was founded in a dusty conference room in Sycamore, Illinois. At
that time it was envisioned that the needs satisfied by the annual conference
were too important to go by the wayside. Thus a coterie of a dozen former
IDEA fellows went about the task of organizing a new group and planning a new conference.
I recall
that evening because I was selected to lead the new group, a responsibility
that was cast upon humble but intense shoulders. A revolving leadership committee
was formed, one that split up vital tasks among a group that specified this
to be a labor of love and not of reward. Thus today, as we gear up toward our
fourth conference, not one member of the organizing group, one that has
already evolved to include new members, has taken a penny in the form of
payment for services.
So our
new group continues to thrive based on the ideals that:
- All FIEL members are workers who toil toward the good
of the group;
- That an intellectually challenging week be planned for
all those who choose to participate;
- That on a yearly basis, an appropriate college campus
would be found to house its members, in less expensive dormitories;
- That the costs remain inexpensive and affordable;
- That the participants take a special interest in new
administrators who might have an experience that would be cherished;
- That the expertise of the participants be utilized
during the week of learning.
These
principles remain sacred to us as we prepare for July, 2010. Feel free to
read on if you are interested in the education of the young people in our
country.
Art DiBenedetto,
Conference Director, 2003 - 2009
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