NPAF/NPSA Alumni Refresh

Program Participants

Over the last few years, many former NPAF/NPSA participants have expressed the desire to “do Relay again” to both refresh their skills and learn new, updated content. The NPAF/NPSA Alumni Refresh is for any alumni who completed their program in good standing and wants to renew and improve their instructional leadership skills. Schools and districts/ networks will find it beneficial to send participants to both NPAF/ NPSA and the Refresh in the same year, so they can implement the content as a team for greater alignment and impact.

Program Focus

Relay is always striving to make our content stronger. In the last few years, we have focused on creating an equity through-line in all of our work. Here is an overview of how each strand of content has been updated recently:

• Leading an Equity-Centered Culture: Going into the 2020-2021 school year, our culture session had significant revisions with the goal of centering equity and being more responsive to students’ needs. The strand across the year includes sessions on staff culture, understanding behavior through an equity lens, and student-centered school-wide supports.
• Coaching Adults: Observation and Feedback is a core content session that has stayed true to its original roots, but now also includes a focus on building relationships with teachers as a key element in coaching. Sessions across the year include new content on Differentiating Coaching and Coaching on Coaching.
• Data-Informed Instruction: This strand includes a mix of core content that is tried and true and new sessions on Multi-Tiered Systems of Supports (MTSS) and Monitoring the Learning for NPSA.
• Strategic Planning and Playbook sessions: In 2017-2018, Relay launched its current version of Strategic Planning and Playbooks. Every year these sessions have been revised and strengthened but the core philosophy of using our student-centered goals to drive daily work has remained the same.
• Weekly Data Meetings: In the summer of 2021, Relay divided this session for the first time into separate ELA and Math content sessions. The core of WDM remains the same with an increased focus on content specific knowledge.
• Weekly Planning Meetings:  In the summer of 2021, Relay offered Weekly Planning Meetings sessions for the first time, also differentiated by ELA and Math content. The WPM strand across the year offers some of our most rigorous content, focused on planning instruction that ensures students tackle the most productive struggle in a lesson, engage in meaningful discourse and master core content.
  

Program Experience

Alumni in the Refresh program are welcome to attend any and/or all sessions of NPAF/ NPSA over the course of the year, including the summer intensive and intersessions. After the mandatory summer Orientation session, they will be free to choose the sessions that are most helpful to their current work. Alumni Refresh participants do not participate in Learning Teams or submit assessments, but may choose to participate in the Triathlon at the end of the summer intensive. Alumni may only attend sessions in the program they have completed; for example, NPAF alumni can only attend NPAF sessions.

As in past years, the NPAF/ NPSA programs consist of a 9-day summer intensive (5 days in person), followed by three multi-day intersessions throughout the year. The Schedule and Cost tab provides more details.

Participants will benefit from:

• Expert faculty: Learn from experienced practitioners who have demonstrated effectiveness in the field.
• Feedback: All of our sessions are designed to have participants practicing and receiving actionable feedback as they grow their instructional leadership skills.
• A network of peers: Join a national network of instructional leaders who can help support implementation and problem solve critical challenges
  

About Partnership

What makes a great partnership? Learn about more about what kind of organizations we work with and how we support them in Supporting Conditions and Infrastructure.

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Or, look for answers to any general questions you may have on our FAQs page.