Achieving Excellence: Leadership Development for Principals

Ground your leadership in best practices and frameworks that empower you to lead schools that support excellence for all learners.

Overview

Being a school principal means attending to a seemingly endless series of urgent tasks that can challenge your resilience and confidence. Given the complex nature of the job and its day-to-day demands, how can you find the time and space to envision a future for your school based on what you know excellence to be as an educator? And how can you develop a plan to implement that vision? 

Achieving Excellence: Leadership Development for Principals (AEL) will give school leaders a chance to step away from day-to-day work, deeply explore their values as educators, and build a concrete plan that centers those values for the benefit of their school communities. This six-day institute brings together school leaders from across the country and around the world to engage in dialogue and define educational frameworks that empower school leaders, students, families, and staff.  

Program Details

During this in-person institute, you’ll learn new frameworks and approaches to help you refine your vision of excellence in education. Together with other leaders and alongside Harvard faculty, you will reflect on the values that define your community. Then, you’ll use those values to shape your leadership plan and create educational experiences that support all learners by truly reflecting community interest, strengths, and needs.  

Throughout the institute, you’ll engage with a problem of practice and participate in a consultancy exercise so you leave the institute prepared to enact new leadership approaches in your setting. You’ll work with experienced principal facilitators in small group discussions to explore ideas, reflect on how they relate to the needs of your school, and create a plan to implement them. As you do, you’ll build strong peer connections with other principals from around the world.

Learning Goals

• Examine leadership frameworks and develop skills for leading highly effective schools and teams
• Learn specific strategies for fostering a positive school culture, and communicating effectively with constituents
• Deepen your understanding of the instructional core and how to best support and grow teacher talent
• Explore the science of trauma and resilience and how to create a school environment that supports both the students and the adults.
• Grow your understanding of the powerful role families and communities play in education and how to engage them in the work.

Who Should Attend

• New and experienced principals and heads of school
• Experienced assistant principals and assistant heads of schools, as well as department heads with at least five years of leadership experience
• Experienced leaders interested in thinking more strategically about their schools and districts

Fees & Policies

Full tuition is due by the indicated payment deadline, which you may find above or on the program’s community page. While a purchase order confirms enrollment, full payment is still required by the payment deadline. Please note that failure to pay by the payment deadline will result in your withdrawal from the program. Click here for more information on payment, refund, and withdrawal policies.

Tuition includes all instructional materials required for participation in the program. The Harvard Graduate School of Education reserves the right to change faculty or cancel programs at its discretion. The school is not responsible for any planning expenses incurred.