I work as a Transformational Leadership Coach in the Oakland Public Schools. I coach individuals, schools, and the educational system towards transformation. But what is transformation? Is it possible to coach to something I can't define? I know that what we have now is not working for the majority of children. Beyond all the statistics about graduation rates and literacy levels, I know that most kids don't love school and wake up every morning aching to get to that place where their minds, bodies, hearts, and souls are nurtured.

In 1993, just after I graduated from college, I moved to Havana, Cuba, to work as a journalist. I was entranced by the Cuban Revolution and by the appeal of a complete overhaul of a country's political and economic system. There were numerous statistical indicators of socio-economic justice: high literacy rates, low infant mortality rates, and so on. But what I learned in the year and a half I lived there was so simple, so embarrassingly obvious: just because an economic system is replaced, even if it brings a measure of economic justice, it's not enough....