Instructional Leadership in Action

While the impact teachers make on learning is well-understood, there’s less appreciation for how principals can foster learning environments that empower students. 

In this six-minute video, Joanna Michelson, director of teacher leadership and learning at the UW Center for Educational Leadership (CEL), shares insights from the work she does with principals and district leaders. Drawing examples from the transformational leadership improvements at the rural Blaine School District in Washington state, she invites the audience to recall their own experiences as students — and to consider how much adult learning impacts student learning.

CEL's mission is to support the work of courageous education leaders across the country. The leaders we work with show their courage each and every day in classrooms, schools and school system central offices.

Over these past couple of weeks, I’ve observed with awe the work of these same leaders as they led their communities’ responses to the outbreak of COVID-19. Across the country, it has become clear that in the toughest of times, our families and communities rely on their schools for support, sustenance, and leadership.

I wanted to share with you that the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) recently released a study that the University of Washington Center for Educational Leadership (CEL) was part of. Principals are vitally important for achieving educational equity, and there are few large-scale studies of principal professional development that identify what helps principals grow. 

We are excited to announce the second cohort of CEL District Leader Fellows.

The CEL District Leader Fellowship is a yearlong professional development and work opportunity for district leaders who possess professional expertise that will serve the Center for Educational Leadership’s mission, help the organization expand its current knowledge base, and allow us to better serve our district partners. Our primary goal in creating this fellowship opportunity is to broaden and diversify the network of leaders who can inform CEL’s work based on their professional and personal perspectives. We believe it is critical for us to truly understand the professional journeys of the leaders we support across the country.

On behalf of our team at the University of Washington Center for Educational Leadership, I am writing to wish a happy and peaceful new year to all of CEL’s partners, peers and supporters. I write this year with hope and optimism for what the coming decade will hold for students, educators and school communities nationally. For our team, the past year was an exciting one in which we released a new vision and mission, deepened our partnership with school systems across the country and engaged in development work that will produce new and revised frameworks in the coming months.

In this latest installment of The Throughline, Max Silverman emphasizes the importance of collaboration for CEL and highlights a recent story about our shared work with a partner, Blaine School District.

Partnership is at the heart of how our team at The University of Washington Center for Educational Leadership (CEL) works with school and system leaders across the country. Over CEL’s 18 years, we have learned again and again that multi-year collaboration in schools and classrooms leads to the greatest change for students and adults in the school systems that we support. 

In this latest installment of The Throughline, Max Silverman uses his final blog post of the school year to share CEL's new vision and mission.

In their recent book, Leading for Professional Learning, my colleagues Anneke Markholt, Joanna Michelson and Stephen Fink begin by acknowledging that, “Our nation has work to do. Deep and historically entrenched economic, political, and social chasms continue to create systemic barriers to student learning that result in educational disparities, dividing our nation’s children along the lines of race, class, and language.”

As alluded to, these societal chasms have been a part of the education landscape for generations and continue to be persistent obstacles to achieving equitable outcomes for too many students. In fact, not too long ago — roughly half a generation — my friend and mentor Stephen Fink courageously launched the University of Washington Center for Educational Leadership with a dedication to eliminating the achievement gap.

What does transformative teacher professional learning look and sound like? This case example — which was written by my colleague Renee Gallagher and published in the May/June 2019 issue of NAESP's Principal magazine — illustrates how a shift in beliefs is key to advancing access and equity for students.

As Renee shows, classroom experiences that are truly transformative for students require adults to work and learn differently than they typically do. Yet, adult beliefs about student capabilities often stand in the way of getting better with teaching practice.

In this latest installment of The Throughline, Max Silverman reflects on a year of conversations with leaders who are pushing for a new school experience for students.

As a leader, you are continually pushing for a new set of outcomes for students, new experiences for leaders in classrooms and schools, and ultimately, new paradigms for schooling.

Over the past seven months of interviews in The Throughline, you have joined me in hearing the best ideas for improving the student experience put forward by education leaders from across the country. These are leaders whom I admire and who have influenced our work at the Center for Educational Leadership — people who illustrate what a new vision of schooling can be about. Each one of these leaders is transforming schools and school systems from a vision that is based on their deep beliefs in the intellect, curiosity and ability of each of their students.