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Professional Development
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) is designed to give school leaders a chance to step away from day-to-day challenges, 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 new and experienced principals from across the country and around the world to engage in dialogue and define educational frameworks that empower school leaders, students, families, and staff.
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 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 interests, 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.
Pamela Mason focuses on the role of culturally sustaining pedagogy in promoting literacy achievement, literacy assessment, and the efficacy of reading specialists and literacy coaches.