The Instructional Leadership Collective is excited to launch a strategic planning process for individual schools and school districts beginning in the spring of 2024.
What is it?
Strategic planning takes schools and districts through a non-judgmental evaluation of their overall performance. It is a process that helps leaders and their school communities identify strengths, areas of growth, opportunities for improvement, and potential challenges.
Strategic plans are meant to provide coherence for schools when it comes to their main priorities, initiatives, and the strategies they engage in to address their greatest challenges at the same time enhance the innovative practices they may already be engaging in.
How do we administer this process?”
There are four areas of evidence that we collect in the process. Those areas of evidence are demographic, student learning, school processes, and qualitative evidence (Bernhardt. 2018) from the perceptions of students, teachers, families, and school leaders.
This is often where judgment begins, and teachers and leaders are made to feel that they are doing the wrong work or not working hard enough. We know nothing could be further from the truth. Our strategic planning process provides a holistic view of a school's current reality as well as its potential for growth. The image below provides some additional information.
We approach strategic planning through a humanistic lens of both science and art. The process can be scientific with how we look at different evidence that school leaders and their teams have collected. However, there is an art to how conversations and learning takes place during that process.
Strategic planning, and how it is implemented through a human and evidence-based approach stands as a foundational step for schools aiming to elevate their standards of teaching and learning. It serves not just as a diagnostic tool but as a strategic blueprint for fostering excellence, and creating a community where human interconnectedness and belonging are valued.
How will our Strategic planning process benefit you and your school community?
Through this process, we help school leaders and their communities prioritize interventions, allocate resources more effectively, and tailor professional development to meet the unique needs of their educators and students. The insights we gain through the process helps empower school leaders and their school community to make informed decisions that directly contribute to enhancing student outcomes and achieving long-term educational goals.
What makes our approach unique?
Where we may offer a different strategic planning experience is what we, as members of the Instructional Leadership Collective, bring to the table when it comes to experience and expertise. Michael Nelson, Chris Beals, and Peter DeWitt have over 30 years of combined teaching experience. All three have building leadership experience, and Chris and Michael have decades of district leadership experience.
Secondly, they created the Instructional Leadership Network (WASA), which brought together directors of teaching and learning from across the state of Washington, where they engaged in monthly hybrid learning for three years using a cycle of inquiry approach.
DeWitt has been coaching school leaders at the K-12 level for 10 years, and has consistently engaged in walkthroughs offering strategies for leaders based on his experience as a leader, time working with John Hattie, and he is a leadership author of nine books. Michael, Chris, and Peter not only look at the strategic planning process through the science of implementation, but they view it as an art of how to engage in conversations, deliver impactful professional learning, and coach leaders and teachers through the process.
Additionally, DeWitt wrote a book and has done a great deal of research focusing on de-implementation (De-implementation. Creating the Space to Focus on What Works). De-implementation is the abandonment of low value practices (van Bodegom-Vos L, Davidoff F, Marang-van de Mheen PJ.). Low value practices are those practices:
We do not want to add strategies and initiatives to the plates of educators; we want to abandon practices that no longer serve them and their students, and focus on strategies that are impactful.
Additionally, what makes the Instructional Leadership Collective’s approach different from others is that they not only engage in the process for school and district leaders, they can also provide the guidance and strategies to help leaders and their school community implement those strategies.
Nelson and DeWitt have co-authored a book focusing on intentional leadership (Leading With Intention. How School Leaders Can Unlock Deeper Collaboration and Drive Results), which incorporates their experiences as leaders, leadership coaches, and developers of ongoing professional learning in North America, the UK and Australia. Due to their combined experiences as leaders, coaches and facilitators members of the Instructional Leadership Collective can provide a customized wrap-around experience that involves research and practice.
If you are a leader looking for a customized and personal strategic planning process, contact the Instructional Leadership Collective today to set up a meeting to discuss further details.
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