How senior leaders build principals' instructional leadership capacity
Bringing Together the Greatest Minds in District & Independent School Leadership
The Roundtable is a global community of superintendents, network CEOs, heads of school, assistant superintendents, area directors, and other principal supervisors who seek to build capacity for instructional leadership in their organizations.
Through a combination of 1:1 consulting, ready-to-use professional development resources, and monthly Roundtable meetings on Zoom, senior leaders develop an evidence-driven approach to improvement at every level of their organizations.
Members are welcomed into the Roundtable with our exclusive Roundtable desk mat, made of full-grain American leather and personalized with your name.
An Evidence-Driven Leadership System
For Districts, Networks, and Independent Schools
Senior leaders play a key role in building principals' capacity for instructional leadership, yet few resources exist for actually helping principals spend their time where the real work of education happens: in the classroom.
If you've ever wondered:
- How often are my principals really getting into classrooms...and what are they doing when they visit?
- Do they really know what and how their teachers are teaching? What vocabulary are they using to discuss practice?
- What's it really like to be a student in one of our classrooms, or a teacher in one of our schools?
...then you're not alone, and you've come to the right place.
At The Principal Center, we believe instructional leaders belong in classrooms, and that supporting this work is one of the greatest points of leverage for senior leaders who are committed to improving student learning.
Read more about our "Go and See" philosophy of instructional leadership in this ASCD Express article:
Our Evidence-Driven Leadership Programs
As a member of the Roundtable, you'll get ready-to-use instructional leadership professional development modules designed to help your principals:
- Confidently get into classrooms every day
- Have feedback conversations that change teacher practice
- Discover their best opportunities for school improvement
Use Principal Center-branded trainings, or use our intellectual property and resources to deliver your own district-branded "in-house" trainings for instructional leaders. As an Instructional Leadership Directors' Roundtable member, the choice is yours.
Our per-student pricing model gives you an organization-wide site license that covers all staff, including principals, assistant principals, central office leaders, deans, teacher leaders, and others you want to develop as instructional leaders.
Roundtable membership includes the following programs:
Instructional Leadership Association
The Instructional Leadership Association helps school leaders confidently get into classrooms every day and build their capacity by following our High-Performance Instructional Leadership Roadmap for growth. We release new content each month through the Instructional Leadership Show, exclusive on-demand training videos, online courses, and our ILA daily planner.
Organizational Learning Intensive
The Organizational Learning Intensive helps school leaders discover their best opportunities for creating sustainable improvement by adopting an evidence-driven school improvement system. Once leaders master the Organizational Learning Cycle, they experience a permanent increase in their capacity to transform their schools into true learning organizations.
High-Performance Instructional Leadership Certification
The High-Performance Instructional Leadership Certification Program builds school leaders' capacity to change teacher practice through evidence-based feedback conversations, using the shared language of their instructional framework. Includes the Instructional Framework Development Program for developing shared expectations with staff.
Direct Support for Senior Leaders
The Roundtable is more than just professional development for the school leaders you supervise—it's also a resource for you.
By becoming a member of the Roundtable, you'll gain direct access to 1:1 consultation and coaching to help you build principals' capacity for instructional leadership.
You'll work directly with Dr. Justin Baeder, Director of The Principal Center, to craft a year-long Instructional Leadership Development Plan for leaders at all levels of your organization.
At the heart of this evidence-driven approach is the practice of District Learning Rounds, which will provide you with firsthand evidence of teacher and administrator practice throughout your district, network, or school.
Monthly Roundtable Meetings
In addition to our world-class professional development programs for your leaders and 1:1 support for your Instructional Leadership Development Plan, you'll gain access to our exclusive Roundtable meetings, where we feature our profession's leading experts and give you direct access so you can ask questions, get feedback, and gain clarity on your next steps in building capacity for instructional leadership.
Roundtable meetings are held on Zoom video chat each month, and are recorded for members to review at any time. Recent and upcoming guests include:
- July 2019: Doug Fisher & Nancy Frey on their PLC+ model from PLC+: Better Decisions and Greater Impact by Design
- August 2019: Jennifer Abrams on Having Hard Conversations
- September 2019: Anthony Muhammad on Time for Change: Four Essential Skills for Transformational School and District Leaders
The Repertoire Walkthrough Feedback App
When you join the Roundtable, you'll gain access to Repertoire for your entire admin team. Repertoire is our web-based feedback app for keeping track of informal classroom visits and providing evidence-based, framework-linked feedback to teachers, using the specific vocabulary of your organization's improvement strategies.
Repertoire empowers you to have evidence-based conversations with instructional leaders about the feedback they're providing to teachers, so you can hold administrators accountable for visiting classrooms regularly and staying close to the work of instructional improvement.
About Your Facilitator
The Instructional Leadership Directors' Roundtable is led by Justin Baeder, Director of The Principal Center. A former principal in Seattle Public Schools, he is creator of the Instructional Leadership Challenge, which has helped more than 10,000 school leaders in 50 countries around the world:
- Confidently Get Into Classrooms Every Day
- Have Feedback Conversations That Change Teacher Practice
- Discover their best opportunities for school improvement
Dr. Baeder is the author of Now We're Talking! 21 Days to High-Performance Instructional Leadership (Solution Tree).
He is the host of Principal Center Radio, a weekly podcast featuring education thought leaders, and Ascend Live, a video show on the ed leadership job search.
Dr. Baeder holds a PhD in Educational Leadership & Policy from the University of Washington, where he studied principal productivity with a view toward helping school leaders make a habit of visiting classrooms daily.
Register for the Roundtable
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