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Grow Your Own
Leadership Development Programs

Improving Schools believes that talented educators, with the right conditions, training, and school structures, have the potential to make good schools great and transform struggling schools into high performing ones. As such, Improving Schools runs three Grow Your Own leadership development programs: an aspiring leader program and a sitting leader program, and a leadership team program. Each programs are outlined below but may be tailored to meet network or district need.

Leadership Institute

Overview

Improving School’s Leadership Institute is a development program for aspiring leaders that focuses on shaping strong leaders and supporting them in building teams to drive dramatic change and lasting impact in a turnaround context. Often, school organizations in struggling districts lack the capacity to identify and develop talent in ways that can effectively and efficiently improve teacher and student performance. This program focuses on developing in-house talent into transformative leaders.

Program participants will be intensively trained and assessed throughout the program year through a combination of all-day development sessions and on-site visits to current schools. Coaching and development focus on:

  • Articulating a mission and vision for turnaround
  • Exploring and developing leadership competencies, including emotional intelligence
  • Recruiting, evaluating, and hiring staff
  • Building aligned teams and effectively distributing leadership
  • Designing systems and structures that support the mission and turnaround vision, including observation, feedback and coaching structures
  • Overseeing unit and lesson plan development in alignment with standards and curricula
  • Use of data to drive instruction
  • Creating detailed summer professional development plans that will enable turnaround staff to execute the vision beginning on day one of placement
  • Recruiting students and additional staff, if applicable
  • Engaging the community to solicit input and build support
  • Building partnerships
  • Overseeing day to day operations in a school
  • Creating a facility plan to rebrand and refresh the turnaround school space during the summer months
  • Visiting and analyzing high functioning and high achieving school sites to understand how effective structures are planned for and what they look like in action

The goal of this program is to develop leaders. As such, commitment from schools/networks to place successful candidates into leadership positions is paramount.

Program Description

Improving School’s Leadership Support Program is a combination of an on-site and virtual support coaching program with the goal of growing the leader’s capacity to foster and sustain student achievement in turnaround and new school settings. The program begins with an initial leader assessment and follows with a School Quality Review (SQR), the combination of which gives coaches the deep understanding to target support and coaching for the leader(s) and school(s) in the highest leverage areas. Using data from the LA360, SQR, and school-level data (teacher evaluation data, student growth / achievement data, school-wide attendance/behavior data), coaches will craft a tailored Coaching and Support Plan (CSP).

Coaching and Support

Coaching will be split between virtual and on-site activities. On-site meetings will focus on observation and feedback of key structures and routines that support the instructional and cultural vision: ILT, LT, Teacher Team Meetings, PD, and classroom instruction. On-site observations will be used to adjust course, revise key, actions, and further the coaching relationship. Virtual meetings will focus on analysis of data, review of, and feedback on Strategic Planning documents, ILT and LT planning documents, PD planning, and other vision related documentation.

Innovation and Development

During two trips to NYC over the course of the year, coaches will visit top-performing schools to consider various innovative approaches and models for dramatically improving outcomes at the new school. Coaches will work with leaders to incorporate aspects of what she sees into her developing school model and to prepare her to effectively lead her school community in realizing the innovative approach.

 

Team Leadership Development

Overview
The Team Leadership Program focuses on school-based Leadership Teams as the level for change and improvement. Through on-site coaching, increase the capacity of current school leadership teams to drive change to improve student outcomes, the quality of school culture, and the systems and structures that support continuous improvement.

We work, side-by-side, with distrcit, network, and school leadership teams to establish coherent instructional and cultural implementation plans, and guide the development of corresponding action plans that earn early wins, gain buy-in from the staff, and consistently move the school community towards improvement goals. Coaching and development activities include:

  • Gap analysis in both school management actions and personal leadership competencies
  • Guidance on developing goals and structures for an effective leadership team
  • Clarification/development of a coherent instructional model and a clear action plan to improve the quality of instruction across classrooms in order to impact student work products and student achievement
  • Guidance on how to organize staff to protect the principal’s time reserved for instructional leadership activities, particularly coaching on classroom instruction
  • Guidance on developing tools and artifacts to drive instructional priorities in the school
  • Guidance on developing systems and structures to monitor the effectiveness of implementation efforts.
  • Articulating a mission and vision for a turnaround
  • Exploring and developing leadership competencies, including emotional intelligence
  • Building aligned teams and effectively distributing leadership
  • Designing systems and structures that support the mission and turnaround vision, including observation, feedback, and coaching structures
Program Description

Improving School’s Leadership Support Program is a combination of an on-site and virtual support coaching program with the goal of growing the leader’s capacity to foster and sustain student achievement in turnaround and new school settings. The program begins with an initial leader assessment and follows with a School Quality Review (SQR), the combination of which gives coaches the deep understanding to target support and coaching for the leader(s) and school(s) in the highest leverage areas. Using data from the LA360, SQR, and school-level data (teacher evaluation data, student growth/achievement data, school-wide attendance/behavior data), coaches will craft a tailored Coaching and Support Plan (CSP).

Coaching and Support

Coaching will be split between virtual and on-site activities. On-site meetings will focus on observation and feedback on key structures and routines that support the instructional and cultural vision: ILT, LT, Teacher Team Meetings, PD, and classroom instruction. On-site observations will be used to adjust course, revise key, actions, and further the coaching relationship. Virtual meetings will focus on the analysis of data, review of, and feedback on Strategic Planning documents, ILT and LT planning documents, PD planning, and other vision-related documentation.

Innovation and Development

During two trips to NYC over the course of the year, coaches will visit top-performing schools to consider various innovative approaches and models for dramatically improving outcomes at the new school. Coaches will work with leaders to incorporate aspects of what she sees into her developing school model and to prepare her to effectively lead her school community in realizing the innovative approach.

Leadership Advancement Program

Overview

Improving School’s Leadership Advancement Program is a combination of an on-site and virtual support coaching program with the goal of growing the leader’s capacity to foster and sustain student achievement in turnaround and new school settings. 

The program begins with an initial leader assessment and follows with a School Quality Review (SQR), the combination of which gives coaches the deep understanding to target support and coaching for the leader(s) and school(s) in the highest leverage areas. Using data from the LA360, SQR, and school-level data (teacher evaluation data, student growth/achievement data, school-wide attendance/behavior data), coaches will craft a tailored Coaching and Support Plan (CSP). Coaching and Support Coaching will be split between virtual and on-site activities. 

Coaching and Support 

On-site meetings will focus on observation and feedback and  on key improvement structures and routines that support the instructional and cultural vision: ILT, LT, Teacher Team Meetings, PD, and classroom instruction. On-site observations will be used to adjust course, revise key, actions, and further the coaching relationship. Virtual meetings will focus on the analysis of data, review of, and feedback on Strategic Planning documents, ILT and LT planning documents, PD planning, and other vision-related documentation. 

Innovation and Development 

During two trips to NYC over the course of the year, coaches will visit top-performing schools to consider various innovative approaches and models for dramatically improving outcomes at the new school. Coaches will work with leaders to incorporate aspects of what she sees into her developing school model and to prepare her to effectively lead her school community in realizing the innovative approach.

Improving Schools Inc is a national non-profit educational services provider focused on improving outcomes for all students.

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