Instructional Leadership Virtual Consulting

Whether we are experiencing pandemic learning, which is virtual learning in crisis, or just trying to focus on high quality virtual learning, being an instructional leader is more important than ever. Many schools were not prepared to go full-on virtual overnight. How could they be? Our teacher and leadership prep programs do not offer classes in teaching during a pandemic, and don’t even often a class in how to teach virtually.

In this webinar series, participants will learn about the most important elements of instructional leadership which come from Dr. Peter DeWitt’s book Instructional Leadership: Creating Practice Out Of Theory (Corwin Press). The book focuses on 50 years of research, as well as practical steps leaders can take in this virtual time, which can be used when we all can come back together in school as well.

In this webinar series, participants will learn about the 6 most important elements of instructional leadership:

• Implementation
• Focus for learning
• Student engagement
• Instructional strategies
• Leadership efficacy
• Evidence of impact

All of these webinars take into account the need for participant dialogue, and will run like a workshop model where participants will receive graphic organizers to use for reflection, and be able to collaborate with other participants in chat rooms. These webinars can be combined, and also offered in a ½ day or full day session.

Implementation – 1 hour

During the pandemic, schools did not have the opportunity to do a great deal of thinking about how to go to a virtual experience. Just because decisions were made quickly, doesn’t mean we cannot move forward using a learner’s mindset. We need to reflect with evidence on what worked, and what didn’t work at all. This one hour webinar focuses on using a program logic model, which is a research way to concentrate on our needs, and helps us go through a 5-step process that takes us to an understanding of how our activities and actions have a positive impact on student and teacher growth, which will ultimately result in our growth as leaders.

Focus for Learning – 2 hours

In student surveys completed during the pandemic, many students answered that they were being provided with review and worksheets, which became un-engaging and created a space where they no longer wanted to sign into class. Given that many school leaders required a “No harm” grading policy, students didn’t see the purpose in engaging in virtual learning.

A focus for learning takes participants through four different knowledge dimensions key to learning, and helps participants decide how they can engage students in those four different elements of learning. Additionally, this webinar focuses on how leaders can take their virtual staff meetings, and use them as an opportunity to discuss the different types of learning that need to take place during virtual and pandemic learning. 

Student Engagement – 1 hour

Student engagement comes down to two different categories, which are social-emotional engagement and academic engagement. In the surveys focusing on virtual engagement, many students indicated that they missed their peers and their teachers. Many of the students answered that their teachers offered them worksheets on using tools like Google Classroom, but few offered a face-to-face virtual classroom experience. Additionally, although students said review was “boring” those students who did have to learn new material stated how hard it was to do that on their own. This brings about questions of how often students are able to experience cognitive conflict when they are in class, so they can better experience it on their own, because the reality is that students will not always have their teacher or parent present when they go through new learning.  In this webinar, participants will learn about the importance of student-teacher relationships and how to build them through a virtual world through surface, deep and transfer learning. Leaders will also learn how to connect with students and teachers in a virtual space.

Instructional Strategies – 1 hour

During the Pandemic we have seen a great deal of learning through on-line worksheets, and many districts stipulated that teachers could only review previously-learned content. Although many districts allowed review only, it doesn’t have to be unengaging and uninspiring. Review can be taught in ways that offer a surface, deep and transfer learning. However, what also began to happen as we were out of our brick and mortar structure week after week is that students, teachers and leaders went through 5 stages of grief, which took them from denial to acceptance, and in the acceptance stage they realized that they needed to offer deeper learning experience. It is not too late to offer those experiences. In this webinar, participants will learn about highly effective instructional strategies, which will also focus on how leaders can get an understanding of how well these instructional strategies are engaging students.

Efficacy – 2 Hours

In research that cut questions and comments from two pandemic social media pages that involve over 200,000 teachers, and were pasted in an Excel spreadsheet for the purposes of coding discussions, we found that many of the questions had to do with how to use a tool or inspired discussions around how hard it was to engage students. Out of the hundreds or comments and thousands of responses, it was clear that the efficacy of teachers, leaders and students is being challenged during pandemic learning experiences.

Efficacy comes down to four different areas, and all of these areas have been challenged during pandemic and virtual learning. The four areas are self-efficacy (i..e student/adult), collective teacher efficacy, leadership efficacy, and collective leader efficacy. All four will be discussed during this two-hour webinar, and participants will focus on one area of improvement that will help raise their level of efficacy.

Evidence of Impact – 1 Hour

Too often we are activity rich and impact poor. In this session, participants will learn the importance of collective evidence of impact, and will be required to bring one piece of evidence to show how they are positively impacting the growth of teachers and students.

Visit this page for more information about Instructional Leadership virtual consulting.