ASPIRING LEADERS
Stronger Today, Ready for Tomorrow
PREPARE FOR THE CLIMB
The climb towards more equitable and excellent schools is underway, right now, in Georgia. Our Aspiring Leaders partnerships are preparing a new generation of leaders with the skills and dispositions to inspire teams and build more joyful and rigorous learning environments for themselves and their students.
OUR APPROACH
Define the Essentials
We begin each Aspiring Leaders partnership with Design Team, a process that engages incumbent leaders in deep conversation about the beliefs, values, skills, and expertise required to successfully lead the climb in their unique community. We marry the team’s deep contextual knowledge with seminal research, LKES, and our own tools and resources to push thinking forward. The result is a set of clearly defined leadership essentials that serve as a foundation for selection and preparation of aspiring leaders.
Select for Success
Each cohort we prepare is carefully selected using a rigorous, objective process that is supported by GLISI tools and aligned with the leadership competency model developed during Design Team.
“Being from here and involved in the system all my life, I think most people saw leader selection as a good-old-boy system... I think they saw it more as that than seeking the qualities and attributes and experience that you need to have as a leader. We now have an objective system for someone applying to be involved in leadership, and it’s a system that everyone is well aware of.”
Prepare for the Climb
We align our curriculum to the leadership competency model developed during Design Team, ensuring a customized learning experience that meets the unique needs of each school system we serve. All our partnerships:
Participants hone new leader skills and broaden perspectives beyond the classroom with feedback from GLISI experts.
Participants construct their own leadership philosophy and make connections to their district’s leadership competency framework.
Participants form lasting professional networks that benefit both leaders and schools.
Each participant deepens their contextual knowledge of broader school and district improvement initiatives by leading one, with an incumbent leader as a critical guide.
WHAT OUR PARTNERS ARE SAYING
We launched our first Aspiring Leaders cohort in 2014. Since then, 14 cohorts across six districts have completed ALP, serving a total of 265 aspiring leaders. We have launched four new partnerships this year.
Forsyth County is our longest Aspiring Leaders partnership. Hear from alumni from the first and second cohorts about what they learned and from district leaders who continue to make the investment in future leaders.