New Women’s Principal Program

Menachem Education Foundation is proud to share that our first Principal Leadership Program for women educators was launched two weeks ago, mid-December of 2010.

Our Principal Leadership Program is a one-year program for men and women principals of Jewish schools, which provides training in transformational and instructional skills. The training and coaching is given by the NYC Leadership Academy. Until this year, the program was only available to male educators, and a generous grant by an anonymous donor made it possible to gather top female educators from across the states to commence this exceptional program.

In this first session we provided an overview of the Leadership Academy’s pedagogical approach to our leadership development work and an overall frame for the year’s workshop series’ content.

During this first session, the school leaders explored a number of key concepts that they will revisit throughout the series this year. Participants explored their experiences with effective and ineffective leaders, examined the Leadership Academy’s leadership dimensions and reflected on their own leadership strengths and challenges. The women reflected on their visions for their schools and examined their schools’ current performance. They analyzed the gap between their schools’ current and desired states in order to identify areas on which they might focus for improvement. Participants went on to examine the opportunities and challenges that data provide schools. They considered the ways in which data are currently used in their schools and explored how data can support their school improvement efforts. Finally, the educators examined their teaching staffs in order to develop differentiated approaches to supporting and developing them. They also explored strategies for having difficult but effective conversations with staff about performances issues.

The session ended with a conversation about the coaching aspect of this program in which the NYC Leadership Academy shared their approach to coaching and learned more about the participants’ needs and expectations for their relationship this coming year. Throughout the two days, the educators were actively engaged in leadership development activities, applying the concepts to their own particular school context. They drew on the knowledge of their colleagues in the room, used one another as thought partners as they explored challenges in their schools and practiced strategies that they can apply in their day-to-day work.

We look forward to this year as we join our educators in effecting improvement and change in our educational system.