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Preparing new school leaders and further developing those who’ve already found roles in administration is a broad task. There’s no single tool or approach that covers everything. The responsibilities of school leaders are varied and the decisions they make affect different constituencies with sometimes competing interests. As a result, it’s impossible to train new and aspiring leaders how to respond to every specific challenge they may face in the course of their careers.
For the basics--and many of the not-so-basic elements of leadership development for potential school leaders --we use a couple different models. One is a 10-session institute for assistant principals who we believe are on the cusp of becoming principals. That includes four hours per month in person, and a fair amount of work on the outside before they come to class. The other, run in conjunction with the Bank Street College of Education, is LEAP, our School Building Leader Certification program. in LEAP, students attend a five-week summer institute, followed by weekly classes during the school year. Our office also provides first-year coaching to new principals.
As we prepare future principals and current administrators for some of the more complex challenges they will face--those in which there may be many things happening at once, or in which there is no single right answer--we ask our leaders to participate in computer simulations, from Ed Leadership SIMS.