“Run toward trouble,” Weast says.

...Run toward trouble 

Morrison’s work at Stone High got noticed. He was Maryland’s Principal of the Year in 2004.
His doctoral adviser, Carol Parham of the University of Maryland, was the one who told him it was time to move on. He went to work for Jerry Weast, superintendent in Montgomery County, Md.
Weast, who recently retired after 35 years as a superintendent, has a national reputation for finding and developing talent. He says he drills all his administrators in a few core values: Provide hope. Be compassionate. And own up quickly and publicly when you make mistakes. “Run toward trouble,” Weast says.
Montgomery County is a large, high-performing suburban district with a struggling urban edge abutting Washington, D.C. Those were the schools Morrison supervised. And that district, more than the smaller and less diverse one he currently leads, gave him a taste of what CMS might be like, Morrison says.
At the core of urban education lie troubling questions: Why are so many poor, black and Hispanic students failing and dropping out? And can anyone break that pattern?
Morrison says he’s always sought to work in schools where those students struggle. Beneath his successful white-guy-in-a-tie surface lies a boy who lived in an impoverished black neighborhood, an American who was a misfit in British school, a youth who lost faith in his own intelligence.
Every educator in America says all children can learn. Morrison believes it, say Weast, Parham and others who have worked with him. And his belief, coupled with his energy, is infectious...

full article at this link:  charlotteobserver: CMS gets a leader ‘on the rise’

Read more here: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2012/05/12/3236570/cms-gets-morrison-on-the-rise.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2012/05/12/3236570/cms-gets-morrison-on-the-rise.html#storylink=cpy