Over the last five years, USA-Kansas has worked with KSDE, KASB, and McREL (through the former Region 12 Comprehensive Center) to bring elements of McRel’s Balanced Leadership and NASSP’s Building Ranks into one comprehensive, multi-year training series: Elevate Leadership. The Elevate Leadership program series is currently focused on developing the leadership capacity of building-level administrators; however, for the past four years, USA-Kansas has invested in developing teacher leadership teams, along with their principals, as part of our summer leadership training component. The Elevate Leadership program series is currently made up of four ‘courses’ that unfold over three school years:
Elevate Leadership 1 & 2 - The Elevate Leadership program focuses on the development of intentional leaders who understand how to build a purposeful school community rooted in best-practices while having a strong understanding of how to lead and manage change. This training unfolds over six workshops throughout each school year with six workshops in year one and six workshops in year 2.
Elevate Your Building Leadership Team - [optional] - This 3-day workshop takes place in the summer for BLTs to work through with their leader who completed Elevate Leadership 1 before the leader then participates in Elevate Leadership 2.
Optional Implementation Coaching for Building Leadership Teams is available throughout the school year as teams work to execute on the action plans developed during the summer workshops. Simultaneously, the school leader would be participating in Elevate Leadership 2.
Elevate Forward - The Elevate Forward series is six days and is focused on enhancing your instructional leadership skills through analyzing system coherence and implementation of changes. Analysis is based upon the areas leaders have targeted for their building through the What Matters Most framework in Elevate 1 & Elevate 2 and their district’s KESA 2.0 goals.
This investment in developing school-level leadership is critical as Kansas strives to lead the world in the success of each student. One participant of Elevate Leadership 1 wrote, “All sessions included time to learn, process with peers, and opportunity to plan for application. Every time I attended, I felt I left with a purpose.” In order to ensure that each school leader is equipped with the necessary knowledge and skills to lead high performing schools, we must invest in the professional development of administrators and aspiring administrators.
