Many school leaders see teacher buy-in as a prerequisite for implementing meaningful change. But professor of educational leadership, Robert Feirsen, argues that the emphasis on buy-in overshadows a deeper and more community-driven form of participation among teachers--psychological ownership--that facilitates more effective school improvement…

Incremental equity initiatives often just paper over the status quo. How can schools be bolder and more strategic? Educators Paul Gorski, Marceline DuBose, and Katy Swalwell share four steps to seismically shift thinking and action and make significant equity progress.

When there's a revolving door of staff members in a school or district, leaders have three choices: leave, survive, or thrive. District administrator Elizabeth Dampf says it's possible to thrive despite--or even because of--high rates of turnover. If you want more out of this period in education, take a few cues from Dampf's "playbook of…

Principal preparation programs devote very little time to showing future principals how to recruit, hire, support, and retain solid teachers. Yet school staff are a major part of every school budget and have one of the biggest impacts on student achievement, so hiring and retaining talent is key. The authors give specific actions and approaches…

One experienced school administrator shares two common misconceptions about teaching and learning that he once thought were the gold standards, then reflects on how adaptive leaders must continuously learn themselves, shifting their practices when and where it is necessary to provide the best education for students.

In order for a coaching program to truly take off in a school, the leaders need to be aware of their starting point and what they need to create or change to make the coaching impactful. This article, written by a consultant who trains coaches, includes a checklist that school leaders can use to determine their school's readiness for coaching and…

Just like in an athletic coaching session, you get out of instructional coaching what you put in. Here, Nina J. Morel, author of "Learning from Coaching: How Do I Work with an Instructional Coach to Grow as a Teacher?" (ASCD, 2014), shares six tips for teachers to bring their "A" game to the coaching process--and improve their…

Compassion fatigue and secondary traumatic stress can be exhausting for education leaders. The good news, says district administrator Mona Johnson, is that they can also be prevented.

It's hard to imagine anything more devastating than a deadly shooting at a school. The setting (often thought of as among the safest places in our communities) and the ages of both victims and perpetrators are particularly troubling. The intense media coverage that typically follows a school shooting reinforces how disturbing such events are. As…

The author highlights increasing district efforts to provide greater on-the-ground supports to help principals succeed as instructional leaders amid the many challenges of their job. The article looks in particular at district mentorship and supervision programs for principals that, according to initial studies and principal experiences, have…

Growing up with the Internet and social media, Millennials are notoriously fluent in tech-based communication (emails, texts, apps). Yet, as research and anecdotal evidence suggests, their interpersonal skills have taken a hit. Education professor Jacqueline Darvin shares how principals are working with novice teachers to improve their…

A disciplinary literacy framework suggests that content-area teachers are best positioned to guide students into discipline-specific ways of reading, writing, and communicating, such as teaching science students to write as scientists do. "Disciplinary literacy instruction" can move students beyond generic literacy strategies and prepare…

Susan Moore Johnson, a professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and leading scholar on school staffing, highlights research from the Project on the Next Generation of Teachers showing the importance of inclusive leadership and team-based structures in improving teacher recruitment and retention. School context is key in determining…

To build collective teacher efficacy, teams must agree to (constructively) disagree, say assistant superintendent B.C. Preston and educator-author Jenni Donohoo. Leaders who mindfully organize team actions, alongside the team itself, empower teachers through processes and protocols to confront ineffective instruction and assessment practices--and…

Being a new teacher is especially stressful and overwhelming: classroom management challenges, lack of administrator support, work-related stress, and feelings of isolation are pushing some to leave the profession all too soon. There are five actions, however, that principals can take to make new teachers a priority now, explain the authors of…