July 2024–June 2025
Leadership Team Institute
Maximize your leadership team’s impact on teaching and learning
Leadership teams matter. Effective school leadership is one of the primary factors that influence student learning and we believe must be a team effort to be successful.
Developing high-functioning leadership teams requires intentionality and a clear understanding of what learning leadership truly looks like in schools. Effective leadership teams create a consistent vision and alignment, ensure multiple perspectives are at the table to solve unique challenges, and share the responsibilities and workload required of leaders.
Learning Forward’s Leadership Team Institute provides a unique and innovative opportunity for school and district leaders to engage in a yearlong program as a vertical leadership team focused on implementing evidence-based policies and practices that address key challenges, improve educator and team practices, and increase student success.
Watch our recorded information session.
Deadline to register is April 15, 2024.
Outcomes
The yearlong Leadership Team Institute is for teams* committed to working collaboratively on a problem of practice that is unique to their school or district. Through in-person convenings, virtual whole-group sessions, and customized coaching sessions participating leadership teams will:
- Grow individual and collective leadership practices as defined by the Standards for Professional Learning, the Professional Standards for Educational Leadership (PSEL), the research report How Principals Affect Students and Schools (2021), and research on change leadership;
- Create a comprehensive leadership team action plan to support implementation of evidence-based practices and policies that address relevant problems of practice and improve educator practice and student outcomes at the school and district levels; and
- Participate in a national, multi-district learning network of like-minded leaders to share common challenges and effective strategies.
*Four-person teams are recommended but teams of up to six will be accepted for an additional, pro-rated fee. Discretion will be given to the roles represented on each leadership team. For example, teams can consist of a principal, assistant principal, and teacher leader from a single school, along with a district principal supervisor/director of leadership; or a team may include a principal, two teacher leaders, and a district leader
Watch a video of our Leadership Team Institute information session.
Details
“The Leadership Team Institute was a great opportunity to engage and collaborate with others. One of the key components I enjoyed was the ability to reflect while we focused on a deeper dive into the structures of the instructional leadership team and what has led to its success. The institute experience was powerful in the sense it provided me as a principal supervisor the ability to listen, reflect, and better support my schools.”
— Ducarmel S. Augustin,
Director, Teaching and Learning,
Lauderdale Manors Early Learning & Research Center (Fla.)
Meet the facilitators
Jody Spiro, Ed.D.
Jody Spiro is the author of Leading Change Step-by-Step: Tactics, Tools and Tales and High-Payoff Strategies: How Education Leaders Get Results. She currently consults with various organizations, including Learning Forward, and teaches at several universities. For 20 years, Spiro was a senior official at The Wallace Foundation, where she led the foundation's education leadership work from 2011 - 2022.
Paul Fleming, Ed.D.
Paul Fleming serves as chief learning officer at Learning Forward. His current areas of focus include leading the effective implementation of the revised Standards for Professional Learning and corresponding tools, the expansion of our professional services and leadership and learning series teams, and multiple consulting projects with states and districts to increase educator and leader effectiveness through equity-focused, high-quality professional learning. Prior to joining Learning Forward, he served as the assistant commissioner for the Teachers and Leaders Division at the Tennessee Department of Education. He was responsible for the design, implementation, evaluation, and support of impactful policies, practices, and programs related to teacher and leader preparation institutions, licensure, evaluation and development, and educator talent.
Daniel Reyes-Guerra, PhD
Daniel Reyes-Guerra is an associate professor of school leadership in the Department of Educational Leadership and Research Methodology at Florida Atlantic University. He founded and serves as the executive director of the Office of Educational Leadership Learning. With experience in leading everything from a coffee farm to a furniture factory, he has served as a teacher, assistant principal, principal, and school director before moving into higher education. Reyes-Guerra has been principal investigator on multiple leadership grants from the state of Florida, the Wallace Foundation, and the US Department of Education. His research is centered on strategic leadership, leadership standards and leadership program standards, school improvement, education policy, and leadership coaching. He also serves as a consultant to multiple districts and university education leadership programs.
Chelsea Collins, Ph.D.
Chelsea Collins is the 2016 NJ State Teacher of the Year and co-founder of ConnectED Workforce. Along with managing Learning Forward’s Leadership Team Institute, Chelsea conceptualized and leads JerseyCAN’s statewide Teacher Leader Policy Fellowship, trains and coaches more than 350 staff members per year as the master trainer for the statewide New Jersey Tutoring Corps, and consults and presents for NJ Principals & Supervisors Association. As a teacher, Chelsea helped lead her school out of “focus status” through data-driven, standards-aligned best practices, resulting in students scoring 25 percent higher than the state average in ELA. When she later worked for the New Jersey Department of Education, she designed and led the state’s first-ever teacher leader network, an initiative that received national accolades.
