Leadership Academy 2020-2021 Cohort
Creating transformational learning communities with a fierce commitment to educational equity and excellence requires hard work and strong leadership. Over the past six years, SRI has been working diligently to identify the best practices for helping educators dive into conversations about educational equity and excellence to help them change and improve their instructional practice to serve all students. We began to notice a trend – the places with the greatest success had one key element in common – strong leadership helping guide the work around equity and excellence.
This data informed the development of the SRI Leadership Academy. This opportunity invites school, district, and nonprofit leaders to engage in a year-long cohort experience to support them to design and implement concrete, achievable goals to transform their schools and organizations.
Classroom teachers can have substantial impact on the learning of students, and the choices they make in their instructional practice are critical to student success. However, without strong leadership at the school and district level, change is inconsistent and develops only in pockets. With strong leadership, the culture of the school and organization changes, and focusing on issues of equity becomes the responsibility of the entire community.
Applications for the secondl cohort of SRI Leadership Academy Fellows are now open. Please consider joining this unique learning experience that will help you design and implement the changes needed to ensure that all students are successful. You will meet virtually with your fellow cohort members in a customized reflective learning community. We will learn together, utilizing an improvement science framework combined with the SRI Educational Equity and Excellence Learning framework. Not only will you grow your leadership, but you will design and implement new practices that move your school or organization into specific action to disrupt student inequities.
Click here to learn more and apply for the second cohort. Space is limited.
Have questions or want to learn more? Email Deidre Williams (deirdre@schoolreforminitiative.org).
If not you, then who? If not now, then when? Our students need us to grow our capacity to support and implement change and I hope you will join us in this commitment.
Leading Powerful Adult Learning Online
May 26, 28, June 2, 4, 2020 – 2-5pm EST
This virtual learning series is designed for leaders, coaches, or those who are often called upon to facilitate meetings or deliver professional development and need support in designing, implementing and supporting adult learning particularly in virtual learning spaces. Using research-based tools and strategies, participants learn how to build community virtually, and nurture ongoing conversations designed to improve leading, teaching and learning. The virtual workshop provides in-depth study of protocols; introduces adult learning theory; builds explicit connections between adult learning and student success; supports participants to ask for and receive feedback critical to their success; and enables participants to design action plans that facilitate the improvement of teaching and learning through the lens of educational equity and excellence.
By the conclusion of the 4-part workshop, participants will:
- Gain an understanding of adult learning theory;
- Understand the connection between adult learning and school transformation;
- Understand core considerations when leading in virtual spaces with SRI reflective tools and processes;
- Explore themselves as leaders; and
- Begin to develop and/or deepen the facilitative skills needed to lead educators’ learning
More Information and Registration
State of the Organization
April 30, 2020 – 6pm EST
Over the last two months many organizations have experienced tremendous economic hardship. Leaders across the country have been reflecting on what it means to be an adaptive leader to keep their organizations surviving particularly during times of crisis. Of course, we want our organizations to do more than survive, but during such unparalleled times, survival suggests that an organization is resilient enough to sustain itself past this crisis. As you might imagine, SRI is feeling the impact of this pandemic economically. Collectively, we have seen the benefits in our classrooms, schools, districts, and communities from engaging in work using SRI’s tools, processes, and the wisdom from fellow affiliates. Likewise, it will take our collective wisdom to see our organization through this economic downturn. Please join the Executive Director April 30, 2020 at 6pm Eastern to hear the progress and challenges SRI is currently experiencing. This meeting is an opportunity to ask questions, and to begin putting our heads together to dialogue about the ways in which we can realize opportunity for SRI amid crisis.
More Information and Registration
Equity First Virtual Institute
Online May 14-15, 2020
We moved our Equity Retreat Online!
This two-day institute deepens the “Who am I?” identity work from the Personal Awareness Institute by exploring how our identities influence the way we walk in, interact with others and make sense of the world. As a reflective learning group, we address several key questions: What do we mean by power and privilege? Do we all have some level of privilege? How can I identify unintended harm I’ve created in the past due to my privilege, and determine what I would do differently to make sure that I don’t make those mistakes again? With an explicit focus on equity, participants gain skills for using SRI tools and processes to:
- Participate in reflective conversations about equity;
- Successfully manage dissonance, disequilibrium and anxiety in a reflective learning group; and
- Make explicit connections among educational practice, student learning & barriers to educational equity.
More Information and Registration
What’s a Coach To Do?! A Conversation About Coaching During Difficult Times
May 7, 2020 – 4-5pm EST
Join Rita Bean and Jacy Ippolito, authors of Cultivating Coaching Mindsets, for an informal webinar session on Tuesday, May 7, 2020, from 4:00-5:00 p.m. EST. During the discussion, Rita and Jacy will share their thoughts and experiences about coaching in this time of crisis. Participants will be invited to raise questions, share their experiences, and describe ways in which they are fulfilling their own roles in this unprecedented time. Several of Rita and Jacy’s colleagues, currently serving in coaching roles, will also share their stories of success and challenge. We hope this session will provide a forum for learning from and with each other.
More Information and Registration
Virtual Connections
School Reform Initiative will continue to facilitate “Virtual Connections” for our community on Wednesdays through the month of May. We love connections as a protocol because all we have to do is prepare ourselves to lean in to each other, there’s nothing to prepare and no other expectations. The rules are simple – speak if you want to speak, don’t speak if you don’t want to speak, and speak only once until everyone has had an opportunity to speak. We’re hoping that if everyone connects for 20 minutes sharing whatever is on their mind that we’ll be able to provide a virtual community because we are not alone in our efforts to balance supporting our students, creating virtual learning for potentially the first time, homeschooling our own children, feeling isolated or anxious, and so many other realities. Remember, there is power in community. We are stronger together and while we may not be able to be in social gatherings for a while. Join SRI for “Virtual Connections” Wednesdays at 10am Central. Join us via Join us via Zoom: https://zoom.us/j/526645533
#10forSRI
Our goal for 2020 is to help educators remember why they became educators, and to do whatever we can to not only help them to ‘feel’ supported, but to actually ‘be’ supported, and work together to create the schools our students deserve. I hope you will join me and continue to support SRI!
SRI is fiercely committed to educational equity and excellence, and we cannot do this work without your support!
Thank you for your commitment to students, families and communities!
Do you have news to share? Interesting things happening in your area? Please let us know so we can share with our community! Email Chris Jones, chris@schoolreforminitiative.org.
Thank you,
Deirdre Williams and Chris Jones
On behalf of School Reform Initiative
