They're Believing the Dream'

Principal Celeste Douglas knows what it takes to make a school great. Time after time, she shared that knowledge with her teachers at M.S. 57 in Brooklyn.

But for a while, she felt as if her guidance didn't connect with her team. While she was painting a grand vision for her teachers, she wasn't helping them see how each brush stroke contributed to the bigger picture. 

"I never was specific about what that looked like," Douglas told us recently.

That changed this summer, when she became one of about 200 fellows at the National Principals Academy Fellowship, Relay Graduate School of Education’s premier program for the nation’s most promising school leaders.

Douglas says her experience at the Academy changed the way she talks to her staff and plans their professional development. Instead of expecting teachers to interpret her general expectations, she now works with them to script precise techniques that will help them achieve specific objectives with their students.

As her teachers learn and practice these techniques, she observes them and offers feedback that helps them implement the techniques with total fidelity.

“This has been the greatest opening I’ve ever had for the start of a school year,” she said. The transformation has been so noticeable that even some of her most skeptical teachers now see the benefit of techniques she learned at the Principals Academy.

“Now that they see it actually work, I feel like they’re believing,” she says, “They’re believing the dream.”

Learn more about the National Principals Academy Fellowship.

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