DATE/TIME
Leadership Academy Plus starts with the 6-day Leadership Academy Institute and continues throughout the 2023-24 school year.
Institute Dates
Thursday, Sept 21
Friday, Sept 22
Thursday, Sept 28
Thursday, Oct 5
Thursday, Oct 12
Thursday, Oct 19
Each Institute day includes 6 hours of synchronous time. Participants get the most out of this program if given off-campus time for this work, so please connect with your manager and/or team to ensure there is a plan for you to participate fully on the above dates.
PRICING
- Individual: $5,650
- Group of 10+ paying together: $4,520 (per person)
- Leadership team member at an Accelerate Institute leader’s school: $4,520 (per person)
To receive the group rate or pay by invoice, please complete the Group Order/Invoice Form.
In many states, Accelerate Institute training is an allowable use of federal COVID-19 relief program funding. Public schools can use ESSER funds for school leadership development.
DESCRIPTION
The Leadership Academy focuses on deepening participants’ understanding of how school leaders create an equitable education for children based on three core principles of what schools need:
- Systems, structures, and adult mindsets that align with the expectation that all students will achieve.
- A positive, relationships-based culture that fosters student belonging and is conducive to high levels of achievement.
- Instruction that centers on what (and which) students learned, with support to make high achievement possible.
Leadership Academy Plus starts with the 6-day Leadership Academy Institute with sessions focused on change management/strategic planning, leading effective adult teams, managing a data-driven culture, and strengthening school culture. Participants will create Strategic Plans based on their role within the school and their individual strengths and areas of growth.
During the school year, participants will join Forums for ongoing professional learning, cohort problem solving, and continued progress monitoring of their Strategic Plan (6 per school year). Forums will take place monthly from November – April (exact dates TBD). Forums will include 3 hours of content and three optional, individual 1:1 problem solving sessions with an advisor.
November: Communicating with Clarity
December: Using Meetings to Provide Clarity Around Progress to Goals
January: Leveraging Change Management to develop a Positive and Equitable School Culture
February: Strategic Thinking and Planning
March: Leveraging Change Management to Develop a Data Driven Culture
April: Leveraging Change Management to Develop Black Belt Teaching
Accelerate Institute will facilitate assessment and one-to-one Advisory cycles throughout the program. These assessment and Advisory cycles are designed to support participants in progress monitoring and course correcting against their strategic plan throughout the year.
Access to Accelerate Institute’s Professional Development Resource Library, a curated resource library that uses short professional development video clips to highlight the work of great school leaders.
OUTCOMES
Participants will:
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- Gain a deep understanding of the research behind leadership in high-performing schools
- Get practical, day-to-day strategies to improve leadership practice in your school by looking at the school system as a whole
- Strengthen skills with learning that is grounded in cohort experience and sessions taught by highly-trained Accelerate Institute staff
- Create a leadership development plan based on individual leadership development areas
- Create a metrics and goal tracker used to progress monitor and course correct
WHO SHOULD ATTEND
School leaders and school-based leadership team members of all levels (e.g., principal, principal-in-residence, assistant principal, dean, director of instruction, instructional coach, etc.). Leadership Academy Plus is a great option for schools/districts looking to develop/enhance an aspiring principal program.
YOUR INSTRUCTORS
Dr. Catherine Burns, President and Chief Academic Officer
A Midwesterner at heart, Catherine grew up in Chicago’s south suburbs and stayed in the region to earn her undergrad and graduate degrees. She started her 20-year career as a high school history teacher and coach, but over the years grew to know and love the middle school and elementary school teachers and students, even her kindergarteners’ milk mustaches at breakfast. Catherine founded a successful charter school in Pilsen, a near southside neighborhood, forging its foundation in the culture of the community where she fostered a school climate where students and teachers loved to be and could learn and grow. Under her leadership, she accelerated student achievement +43% in 4 years in reading and math as measured by NWEA. In the 4th year of operation, the 4th and 5th grade students were 90/90/90 classrooms, demonstrating that after 3 years of instruction at BDLC the achievement gap would be closed.
Catherine leads our Curriculum and Assessment Team and helps set the vision for our organization as CAO. Catherine is a thought leader on leadership development, executive coaching, and team management. In addition to her tireless work on behalf of students, Catherine is dedicated to her family and friends. Catherine, her husband, Ken, and son Logan love travel, baseball, superheroes and if you have questions about dinosaurs or sinkholes, she might have the answer.
Jillian Carew, Managing Director of Programs
Raised on the South Side of Chicago, Jillian is committed to ensuring that all young people have access to a quality education. She earned her undergraduate degree from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign where she developed a passion for working with youth. After graduating, she joined Teach for America as a corps member where she taught 3rd grade and earned a master’s degree in Curriculum and Instruction from UNLV. She then returned to Chicago and helped open what became the #1 non-selective enrollment high school in the city, a Noble School. While at Noble, she became an award-winning teacher; spent five years across two campuses teaching 9th and 11th grade math; and served as a dean. She later went on to serve as an Assistant Principal and Principal across the pre-K to 12 spectrums at University of Chicago-Donoghue, CICS Wrightwood, and Foundations College Prep.
During her tenure as a school leader, she secured more than a half million dollars in grant money on her quest to dismantle the school-to-prison pipeline. While leading her team at Wrightwood as a Growth Accelerator participant, she exceeded expectations to increase the school’s overall School Quality Rating Program score from a 2.2 to a 3.5. Since then, she’s become an educational consultant and most recently led instructional improvement work around turning research into anti-racist practice for the University of Chicago’s Network for College Success.
Jillian is primarily responsible for overseeing and improving outcomes for Accelerate’s core programs: The Chicago Growth Accelerator and Leadership Academy. When she’s not working to create a pathway to college for youth, she enjoys being near water, completing puzzles, collecting sneakers, and traveling! She also builds and donates beds for kids in need as the Chapter President of Sleep in Heavenly Peace – Chicago South. She is a thought leader on organizational health with a focus on equitable practices and high functioning teams.
Keelin Philippe, Senior Director of Professional Learning
After graduating from Villanova University, Keelin joined Inner-City Teaching Corps in Chicago, spending the next two years as a volunteer teacher on Chicago’s south side. Keelin remained in the classroom for seven years, working at Catholic schools and Chicago Public Schools. And in 2006, she won the Presidential Award for Math and Science for the state of Illinois, where she was invited to meet with the President of the United States. Although her passion was teaching early elementary students, she spent time working with middle school writers. It was her love of reading and teaching young readers that led her to pursue a second Master’s degree in Literacy, Language and Culture with a Reading Specialist certification from the University of Illinois at Chicago (she also holds a Master’s degree in Education from Northwestern University). Keelin has been with Accelerate Institute since 2007, starting as the Director of Teacher Coaching.
In her role as Senior Director of Professional Development, Keelin develops and facilitates the Accelerate Institute Curriculum for all programs: School Accelerator, Principal Fellowship, Leadership Academy, and Accelerate Online. During her tenure at Accelerate Institute, Keelin has played a key role in program innovation by leading the creation of the Leadership Academy, a program for school leaders at all levels, as well as creating and leading the beta testing for Accelerate Online, a fully asynchronous online learning platform for current and aspiring school leaders. Prior to taking on her current role, Keelin was a Director of Curriculum and Assessment, where she was responsible for the planning and execution of the one-year Field Study experience for participants in the Principal Fellowship program and was an Advisor to Principal Fellows, supporting them through their Field Study and their first two years of principalship.
Keelin has been trained in multiple coaching models including New Teacher Center’s Teacher Induction and CT3’s Real-Time Teacher Coaching. A life-long learner herself, Keelin holds a Master of Science in Education from Northwestern University, a Master of Education in Literacy, Language and Culture from the University of Illinois at Chicago and a Certificate in E-Learning and Instructional Design from the University of Washington. Keelin loves thinking and learning about how adults and kids learn. Before joining Accelerate Institute in 2007, Keelin got her start teaching through Accelerate Institute’s founding program, ICTC, and during that time worked in both the Chicago Public Schools and the Archdiocese of Chicago schools. In 2006, she was honored with the Presidential Award for Math and Science Teaching for the state of Illinois. Keelin currently resides in Bristol, Rhode Island with her husband and two children. They love being out in nature whenever they can.
Erica Eichleay, Director of Curriculum and Assessment
A fourth-generation educator and native Detroiter, Erica began her teaching career in 1995 at the Frances Xavier Warde School (FXW) in Chicago, teaching grades four through eight. During that time, Erica conducted various action-research projects around student self-assessment and collaborative conferences which she presented for the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE). Beginning in 2006, she worked as an Instructional Coach with the Inner-City Teaching Corps—Accelerate Institute’s teacher training program—before she made the transition to The Principal Fellowship team in 2013. During her nearly 15 years with Accelerate Institute, Erica has trained and mentored more than 60 rising educational leaders across public, charter, and Catholic schools. She has extensive training and expertise with various coaching models including New Teacher Center’s Teacher Induction and CT3’s Real-Time Teacher Coaching. Erica also leverages her experience implementing a range of instructional practices including Responsive Classroom, Project-Based Learning, Kagan Structures, and Multi-Sensory Learning to support leaders in developing their instructional vision. Erica earned a bachelor’s degree in Psychology from Oakland University and a master’s in Curriculum and Instruction from Loyola University.
CANCELLATION POLICY
- Refunds requested within 48 hours of registering will be honored minus a $50 cancellation fee.
- Up to 1 week beforehand, a one-time registration transfer can be made to an alternate participant or another learning experience.
- Within one week of the learning experience registrations are non-refundable and non-transferable.
- A missed learning experience is non-refundable and non-transferrable.
In the rare event that Accelerate Institute does not receive enough interest in this offering to host it as scheduled, we will provide an alternate learning pathway for all registrants or honor refunds for those who cannot join the alternate experience.
QUESTIONS?
Feel free to contact Erin Brooks, Vice President of Partnerships, via email.
