School Leadership Academies

The Insight Leadership Academies help principals, assistant principals, teacher leaders, and aspiring leaders execute with the confidence to make bold change happen.

School leaders tell us all the time that they do not need another session on "mission and vision," "culture and climate," or "instruction and assessment."

Instead, they tell us they want to know how to execute so that their boldest ideas about teaching and learning and their audacious dreams for students come alive every day for every student.

In a nutshell, they have asked us to help them win at the implementation game.

About the Academies

Based on evidence-based research and practice, the Academy model is an in-person, customized professional development experience delivered on-site in your district for up 50 leaders per cohort.

Who the Academies Serve

In order to provide support for leaders across your district, we provide specific academies for:

• principals
• vice principals
• teacher leaders
• aspiring school-based leaders

Sessions

Each academy includes eight practical and hands-on sessions, including content, problem-solving, and strategic-thinking sessions.

Insight works with district leadership to ensure that each academy is aligned to your district's priorities and needs. Sample modules include:

1. Leadership Mindset
2. Instructional Vision
3. Strategic Thinking and Problem Solving
4. Implementer's Mindset
5. Recognizing Great Instruction and Growing Teachers
6. Distributed Leadership
7. Equity and Cultural Competency
8. Redefining School Culture and Climate

What Each Academy Prepares Leaders To Do and Be

• Embrace a leadership mindset, the lens through which leaders see their work, relationships, and entire world and serves as the foundation for all that they do, and more importantly how they do it.
• Be distributive leaders, which entails how to lead a team and how to distribute roles and responsibilities among their staff members.
• Be strategic thinkers and problem solvers with the ability to address issues (both big and small) that cannot be predicted.
• Articulate a clear and compelling instructional vision upon which all decisions can be grounded.
• Make difficult decisions based on clear rationale and data.
• Know quality instruction when they see it and grow teachers to be effective facilitators of learning.
• Cultivate the Implementer's Mindset, a mindset that brings astonishing focus, discipline, and accountability to achieving top priorities.

Program Design

The academies are grounded in six key design features:

1. Differentiated
2. Aligned to expectations
3. Literature-rich
4. Issue-based & relevant
5. Job-embedded
6. Data-driven

Job-Embedded Executive Coaching

To ensure implementation of concepts learned in each of the academies' sessions, we provide executive coaching for leaders. Topic areas during coaching sessions may include (though are not limited to):

• Data analysis
• Effective instructional practices
• Planning professional learning
• Fiscal planning and management
• ROI analyses

In addition, the leader and coach will use authentic scenarios to think through strategic decisions including communication and stakeholder support.

Customized to Your District's Needs & Priorities

Through the academies and executive coaching sessions, we can supplement and customize content so that it embraces your district's unique context and the developmental level of the participants involved.