Course Descriptions

Authentic Leadership

Leaders are responsible for results. In an organizational setting, the leader is responsible for building collective capacity to achieve results that matter. This course explores, in depth, the powerful connection between authentic servant leadership and leadership competencies while beginning (or continuing) each student’s leadership journey. Candidates will learn how to manage the vision and purpose of a school culture, motivate and influence stakeholders, focus on the customer, lead people and manage processes, prioritize and delegate, communicate effectively, and build and strengthen relationships.

Culture of High Performing Schools

In this course leadership candidates will learn the 5 indicators of effective schools, describe what constitutes a highly effective school culture, and learn the leadership strategies needed to create a school culture that dramatically improves the lives of the students therein.

Candidates will use a Culture Audit Protocol to assess the culture of a local school. Candidates will create an action plan to prioritize the changes needed to move the school to becoming an effective results-driven entity. Candidates will learn how to prioritize their action plan in order to maximize student achievement gains. Principals from schools locally, nationally and internationally who have made the change from failing to effective will work with the candidates in this course.

Leadership for Student Learning

In this course Leadership Candidates will unpack transformational leadership as it relates to school leadership and its impact on student achievement. This includes “deep diving” into change management and leadership, state turnaround and under-performing schools, the decision-making process of a leader and building and sustaining safe and supportive learning environments for both staff and students. Leadership Candidates will explore and learn about these topics through National Faculty seminars, case studies and their own school-based observations and evaluation.

Literacy Leadership:

Science Technology Engineering and Math (STEM) and English Language Communications

During the second summer session, leadership candidates will attend literacy and STEM sessions in order to be able to lead teachers to implement local, national, and international standards and instructional strategies. In order to become competitive nationally and internationally, leaders need to be able to commit resources to improve teacher and student content knowledge. Leadership candidates will be immersed in all areas of the curriculum including Response to Instruction, Special Education and English as a Second Language.

School Law and Management

During this course candidates will be given a strong foundation in school law, budgeting, school contracts and collective bargaining, school safety and student/teacher rights. These foundational elements will be tied to the purpose of creating a school culture of high achievement for all. During this course candidates will be required to participate in field experiences at each developmental level.

School Law and Management

Statistics for Program Development

This course is designed to provide leadership candidates with an introductory knowledge and examples of research methodologies utilized in Educational Studies and the Behavioral Sciences. Basic research concepts, including quantitative and qualitative research, ethics, sampling, objectivity, reliability, validity, and standardization are discussed. Research methods such as questionnaires, descriptive, casual-comparative, correlational, experimental, and quasi-experimental will be covered. This is a conceptual research course designed to prepare leadership candidates to understand Educational research as presented in professional settings and to prepare the leadership candidate to be a critical consumer of primary research.

Systems Thinking

This course will teach leadership candidates to think critically and strategically when working with school systems. Leadership Candidates will

think critically,
expose and challenge underlying, taken for granted assumptions,
identify marginal and excluded stakeholders,
integrate ethics, crisis management, issues management, operations, and strategic planning, and
tackle complex problems.

This course focuses on solving the right problem the right way and instituting operational systems that support student achievement. Leadership Candidates will work with case studies in order to formulate problems from multiple perspectives and will learn how to manage messes.

Teacher Performance and Student Learning

Leadership candidates will practice evaluating teachers and model how to conduct critical conversations with teachers regarding their observed effectiveness. Leadership Candidates will learn how to set measureable goals and work with teachers to establish yearly improvement goals. Indiana Department of Education teacher observation protocols will be introduced and practiced during this course. Leadership Candidates will model for teachers how to use student-level data to drive instructional improvement. Leadership candidates will learn how to identify, recruit, hire, develop, and retain talented teachers.