Supporting Conditions and Infrastructure

Relay’s Leadership Programs are designed to enhance leadership practice, and a central focus of our training model is to improve participants’ ability to effectively coach other educators. To ensure successful outcomes, we strongly recommend that partners have the following assets in place.  

Resources and Organizational Flexibility

The district/organization or specific school has or will have within the school year systems that support the core instructional levers that we explore in our programs. Such core instructional levers include: data- informed instruction; student culture systems and routines; observation and feedback of teachers; instructional planning and leading adult professional development. Specifically, for our partners to maximize the learning in our programs, Relay recommends:

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For the National Principal Academy Fellowship: 

• All participants must use an electronic observation and feedback tracker that enables leaders to track observations, identify action steps, and see trends across multiple observations. 
• Implement common, standards-aligned interim assessments at least three times per year in the grades for which the leader will be responsible.

‍For all programs: The partner’s systems and organized labor contracts allow for frequent, informal observations of teachers and coaching debrief meetings.

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Partner Leadership Commitment

The district/organization has commitment at the district and principal manager level to do the following:

• Ensure that video can be used to capture  the participant's work with teachers (including, but not limited to: video-recording classroom instruction, individual feedback conversations with teachers, data meetings with teachers, and professional development sessions).
• Whether enrolled in the Principal Supervisor program or not, all managers of enrolled Fellows or ILPD participants will support the implementation of the Relay content and their development by fulfilling their commitments to Relay programming, including attendance at sessions and timely and successful submission of assessments.‍
• For the Inclusive School Leadership Institute: Principals or other managers will support to meet their commitments to Relay programming including session attendance, timely and successful completion of assessments, participation in individual coaching sessions, and school walkthroughs. Principals or other school leaders also agree to participate in the three designated online courses in the fall and spring.

Leadership Selection 

For our program to be most impactful on student outcomes and your district/organization, we recommend the selection of leaders that demonstrate the following mindsets:

• Continuously Improving Effectiveness: Demonstrated openness to feedback with willingness to practice and incorporate feedback to continuously improve.
• Belief and Personal Responsibility: Sees it as their personal responsibility as a principal to ensure that ALL of their students succeed. Takes ownership of mistakes and actively problem-solves when challenges arise to ensure a focus on student learning.
• Work Ethic and Relentless Drive: Has a strong work ethic and is willing to do what it takes to build a strong school. In particular, is willing to commit the extra time for this program. 
• All participants must commit to the policies as denoted by the table below: