Leading from the Eye of the Storm

Scott Thompson is assistant director of the Panasonic Foundation, a corporate philanthropy devoted to the transformation of public education in the United States; editor of Strategies, an issues series by the Panasonic Foundation in cooperation with the American Association of School Administrators, and president and a founding trustee of the Glen Rock Public Education Foundation. Prior to joining the Panasonic staff, he was director of dissemination and project development with the Institute for Responsive Education and editor of New Schools, New Communities.

The America I love now suffers from a toxic brew of fear, cynicism, and false bravado that is taking a terrific toll on everything from individual to institutional life. If we are to deal with the spiritual emptiness behind all this-and find responses that honor the needs of a pluralistic democracy-our public schools must become places where questions of meaning and purpose are taken seriously. Here is a superbly written book that will help educational leaders step up to that challenge. Using tools ranging from poetry, to social analysis, to interviews with change agents, to case studies of transformation, Scott Thompson makes a powerful contribution to our understanding of the spiritual depths that are hidden, but not lost, in our individual and collective lives.