P1 / Executive Message
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A Message From Executive
How to Prioritize When
2013-2014 Base Camp and
Tools for Collective Impact and
Director Gale Hulme
Everything is High Priority
Leadership Summit Dates
High School Feedback Reports
IIC Profile
BCLS
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GLISI News & Events
The Leader ISSUE 1
WINTER / 2013
GLISI’s mission is to develop world-class education leaders who advance student achievement and organizational effectiveness.
Message from the Executive Director Welcome to GLISI’s new and improved quarterly newsletter. My pledge to you is that this newsletter will be brief and useful. Each issue will feature district leaders like you who are improving teaming and learning. For this first issue, we turn to Mitchell County in Southwest Georgia. We will also highlight
How to Prioritize When Everything is High Priority After the excitement of Base Camp and Leadership Summit fades, how do districts that improve student achievement maintain their focus? Three letters: I-I-C. The Improvement Implementation Coordinator is integral
resources, tools, and upcoming events that can help you be
to driving and sustaining change on the ground. This
a better leader.
feature will shine a light on the important role of the IIC
As always, I welcome your feedback and questions about
in districts with promising student achievement results.
GLISI or education leadership. I look forward to working with
Christy Wray is a former high school math teacher and
you to build great school and district leaders for Georgia.
academic math coach. Currently, she serves as the Mitchell County’ School System’s Curriculum Director and has been a GLISI IIC for the last five years. Here, she offers a glimpse into her life as an IIC.
Gale D. Hulme, Ed.D. Executive Director
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our schools are facing. But at every meeting, we devote time to look at two things: 1) how we are doing on our balanced scorecard and 2) our progress on our priority areas. Q: What advice would you give someone who is stepping into the role of an IIC? A: I think one of the most important jobs an IIC has is helping each team member understand the purpose of attending Base Camp and Leadership Summit - particularly why they were selected and what they are supposed to be gaining from the experience. For every cohort, I put together notebooks for every single team member. I mean, these notebooks are complete with divider tabs so that every team member has the same information. The notebook includes our system improvement plan, our balanced scorecard, and our strategic plan. Since some teachers may not have ever seen some of these documents, I make sure to go over each of these documents with every team member. This helps us to link back all the work done at Base Camp to our district strategic goals. I have found that taking the time to get organized and prepared for Base Camp and Leadership Summit not only improves our teams’ experience during the three days at the mountain, but it helps them to continue the work when they return to Mitchell County. To read the full interview, click here.
The Mitchell County team is pictured here working together on data analysis as part of Cohort 37 in Fall 2012
Q: How often do you meet with the teams that have attended Base Camp and Leadership Summit? A: It depends on the team, and it depends on the issue we identified as our focus. We ask ourselves: Is this something we need to act on immediately? Is it something we need to find a program to implement or find some resources to help our teachers? So we meet monthly, but it just depends on the team and the need. We also created a cohort team that meets annually in the spring and includes all the teachers and leaders that have ever attended Base Camp and Leadership Summit, everyone that’s ever been “GLISIfied.” It can be hard to squeeze these meetings in, but the one meeting I know we will have is the monthly principal director’s meetings. We always have these before school from 7:30 to 9:30 a.m. and our principals, sometimes assistant principals, our superintendent, and of course I attend. We come together once a month and we talk about any particular challenges
Christy Wray is Mitchell County’s curriculum director. She also serves as the system’s test coordinator, professional learning director, grant writer, pre-K project director, and about half a dozen more positions whose hats she wears more or less equally.
HS Feedback Reports
Coming Soon!
In conjunction with our celebration of successes among the ten pilot districts participating in the Data Utilization Project, GLISI invites you to join us in being among the first to see the newly developed Georgia High School Feedback Reports. The event will take place on March 18, 2013 from 10:00am - 2:00pm at the Evergreen Conference Center located in Stone Mountain, Georgia. Attendance is by invitation only; however, limited additional seats may be available for a nominal fee. Learn more here.
Tools for Leading In January, GLISI launched a research brief series, designed to help school and districts leaders learn about trending innovations in education. The first brief focused on collective impact, a strategy that shows promise in helping organizations join forces to bring about longlasting positive changes in education. To read the full brief, click here.
Registration for 2013-2014 Base Camp & Leadership Summit will be open in March. To be placed on a priority list for registration next year, contact Nanci Foster at nanci.foster@glisi.org. Save the dates now!
Cohort 40 (Secondary) September 9-11 and October 7-9
Cohort 41 (Teacher Leader) October 28-30 and December 9-11
Cohort 42 (District) January 13-15 & February 24-26, 2014
GLISI is an independent non-profit organization providing training and consulting to school and district leaders throughout Georgia. Georgia Leadership Institute for School Improvement 1755 North Brown Road, Suite 200 Lawrenceville, GA 30043 770-464-9299
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