Beginning of July already, can you believe it? I feel like spring break was just a couple of weeks ago. At the same time, it’s only two weeks since we were getting to start HQI Live in Milford, and that seems like a very long time ago—so much has happened since then. The Strategy [...]

Friends, I hope this finds you well. I feel like I am stealing a few moments between the end of HQI Live in Milford yesterday and the Strategy Workshop at Connecticut College next week—an intense couple of weeks! But I wanted to write about the similarities between the two, partly for my own benefit [...]

Today is the first day of a very ambitious adult learning experience in Milford. There are 70 people here at Foran High School today—two teachers from each school, and all the building and central office administrators. We are here in preparation for the really ambitious part, which happens next week. Two teachers are going [...]

This Coaching Letter is about Coaching! I think a lot about coaches and teacher leaders, and how to leverage them better. These educators tend to be really strong teachers who also have other great qualities—they are hard-working, reliable, committed to student success, committed to their own improvement, credible to their colleagues, and have good [...]

Not too late to sign up for our Reading for Leading Soiree next week. Here’s the link. I chose Amy Edmondson’s book, The Fearless Organization, because of several experiences I had last year working with principals and other relatively junior educational leaders who believed that they had been given the message by senior leaders [...]

This Coaching Letter is about listening and empathy. I really appreciate Shane Parrish’s work, and I am grateful for the Brain Food newsletter, the Farnam Street blog (see this post on decision making, which is my favorite so far, although this one on mental models is also very interesting) and the Knowledge Project podcast. And see also CL #61. However, [...]

Good evening, I hope this finds you well. First, when we first announced that The Fearless Organization was our latest Reading for Leading book selection, we asked you to hold May 29 for a soirée. We shifted that date to June 4, because that evening the author, Amy Edmondson, can join us by video [...]

So much happens that I can’t write about it all. Sometimes I can’t even cover everything that happens in one day. Take the coaching workshop that Kerry and I hosted on Monday. We talked about coaching for equity, feedback, creating a shared understanding of high quality instruction, perceived self-efficacy… and those are only the [...]

Hi, I hope you are well. Tons of feedback on last week’s Coaching Letter, so here, unsurprisingly, is more about feedback. During one of my stints teaching in principal preparation programs (three different universities, so far), one of my colleagues asked to talk to me after one of our classes. “So,” she said, “How [...]

Last week was intense—partly because it was packed, and partly because several of the events packing it seemed very high stakes. So I’m going to talk about two of them and try to cleverly tie together big ideas about strategy, feedback, and failure as a rehearsal for success. I spent Thursday with the leadership [...]