Launching Distinguished Leadership in Practice

One of the first rules of writing is to know your audience. I know you. What I don't know is how many of you read our other print medium designed  to keep you abreast of all things TLA. I refer, of course, to the monthly newsletter. If you are a regular reader of the newsletter, you will not be surprised by this week's blog.

I have just finished two days of face-to-face training with principals from across the state launching Distinguished Leadership in Practice at the Sheraton Hotel in downtown Raleigh. As I previously wrote in our newsletter, DLP is a new model of principal development sponsored by the NC Department of Public Instruction and UNC Learn NC, and produced by NC Principals and Assistant Principals Association. Populated by 40 experienced principals endorsed by their superintendents to be in the first cohort of the yearlong program, DLP uses a blended-learning design incorporating traditional face-to-face sessions and online instruction using Learn NC's platform and technical assistants.

As for my role, I am honored to partner with education leader notables Kermit Buckner, Stephen Greene, Muriel Summers, Tom Williams, and Shirley Prince to develop and deliver the curriculum. Shirley, our team leader and NCPAPA executive director, is ably assisted, as are we all, by associate executive director, Emily Doyle. Adria Kempner of Learn NC is our expert and amazingly patient online curriculum development coordinator. Producers from UNC-TV will eventually help us by shooting footage of outstanding NC principals doing what they do as it applies to various components we develop. Working behind the scenes now for the better part of a year, we have created a committed, cohesive team ready to contribute to school improvement across the state. And we learn more everytime we meet.

One way we intend for school improvement to happen is by localizing and supporting principal learning in each of the eight education regions. Triangle districts are primarily in Region 2. Principals like Jason Johnson, Deshera Mack, Matt Wight, and Sylvia Wilkins, all participants in the first cohort, are poised to take on leadership responsibilities by convening other Region 2 principals to dive deeper into the leadership curriculum. As a matter of fact, the accomplished principals of the first cohort, having had only a little better than an even chance of getting into the program as it turned out, are helping co-design the curriculum by providing feedback on content and processes.

Here is where we are going: Building from the new NC Standards for School Executives, each of the six face-to-face sessions and five-six week intervening online course, focuses on one of more of the standards and on improving skills and competencies leading to designation as "Distinguished" on the new principal evaluation instrument. Some of you might know that Joe Peel and I, working in the heat of the summer of 2005, sythesized the extant research on school-leader effectiveness as a framework for our own regional leadership academy curriculum. Little could we have predicted that the NC State Board of Education would eventually adopt our framework as the standard for the entire state. I'm still pinching myself.

In any event, we are off to the races. You may be interested to know that all of what we are creating will be available for use by TLA schools and districts. It is an exciting opportunity to partner that only increases TLA capacity without increasing our costs. Now that's a win-win!