Calling All Principals & EdLeaders!

As a follow up to Deeper Learning for Every Student Every Day and Preparing Teachers for Deeper Learning, Getting Smart’s new project with Hewlett Foundation is Preparing Leaders for Deeper Learning. The goal of the project is to address how leadership preparation and development must evolve to better equip leaders to create and support Deeper Learning environments.

We’d love to represent the voices of current, practicing principals and welcome guest blog contributions related to these prompts. If submitting a full guest blog is not of interest, we also welcome your emailed responses to any of these questions and your answers will be used to inform our ongoing research. Your insights are a valuable and important contribution!

• As a practitioner, how would you describe the gap between current leadership preparation and professional development programs and the realities of schools and school districts? Do you have ideas about how to bridge them?
• What specific competencies are essential for leadership to thrive in innovative schools?
• As schools shift to personalized and competency-based, deeper learning, how will the role of the leader change? What sorts of skills, habits, and mindsets will support these significant shifts in education?
• How do you cultivate leadership among your staff? What personalized learning experiences and work experiences help prepare/develop leaders in your school/network? Are their specific examples from your school/network that illustrate an alternative to the current teacher > masters degree in admin > assistant principal > principal pipeline?
• What best practices exist to help leaders cultivate a next-gen/deeper learning experiences? How does your school/district/network approach this work?
• What role do leaders play in shaping school culture and climate in support of next-gen or deeper learning? What traits help leaders to create conditions of success?
• How does your school/district/network/org currently define leadership? What roles, outside of traditional principal/asst. principal leadership, exist? Describe how/why this is a key piece in the success of your school/model.
• What does your school/network look for in a potential leader? Are their specific skills/competencies/mindsets that you believe leaders must have to successfully lead in your learning environment?

We also welcome anything generally on the topic of leadership. (What’s missing from the current discourse around leadership? What is the biggest challenge? What is the greatest opportunity?)

All guest blog contributions should follow the guidelines laid out in our guest blogging policy and must be submitted to by 3/2/2015.  If you intend to send a submission, please let us know by indicating which prompt you will address by contacting [email protected] with the subject line “Preparing Leaders Guest Blog.”

For more information, see:

• Preparing Principals: Consider the Adaptive Challenge
• Next-Gen Principal Prep: Blended, Personalized, Competency-based
• Preparing Principals: Best Practices and Next Steps
• How should principals be trained? Like MBAs? Like CEOs?