Baruti K. Kafele

In this one or two full days workshop (or keynote address), Principal Kafele contends emphatically that, “The primary purpose of the supervision of teachers is student achievement and their continued improvement of instruction!” Due to the complexities of school leadership, it is easy to be so inundated by the non-instructional aspects of the work that the instructional side of the leadership inclusive of instructional coaching suffers. When the instructional side suffers, it adversely impacts the entire school academically. To that end, in this high-engagement, self-reflective workshop (or keynote address), Principal Kafele will provide principals and assistant principals with strategies toward maintaining a focus on the instructional side of their leadership toward increasing the probability that teacher pedagogy will improve significantly and student achievement will soar. Attention will also be given to creating a school-wide culture of instructional leadership that is conducive to sustaining instructional leadership engagement and effectiveness over the course of an entire school year.

Topics covered: 1 & 2 (below) are built into the presentation. Either the client or Principal Kafele determine the remaining topics to be covered based upon need and length of time of presentation.

1. Instructional Leadership Must Be at Your Core: Everything Else Is Secondary (What is instructional leadership and what does it mean to my practice as a school leader?)

2. Instructional Leadership and Student Achievement Go "Hand in Glove" (Do I understand that my main priority is student achievement and the continued improvement of instruction?)

3. Instructional Leadership Is Where the "Rubber Meets the Road" (Would I consider the instructional aspect of my leadership to be my primary focus as a leader? What is the evidence?)

4. Instructional Leadership and Your Instructional Self-Assessment (What does instructional leadership look like for me during the normal course of a day?)

5. Instructional Leadership and Your Expectations of Excellence (Do I have a philosophy, beliefs, opinions and ideas about how children learn based upon my own research, reading and experiences?)

6. Instructional Leadership and the Pre- & Post Observation Conference (What is the significance of the pre- and post-observation conference to my leadership instructionally, inclusive of the analysis of data?)

7. Instructional Leadership and Knowing Excellent Pedagogy (What do I know about excellent pedagogy beyond who I was as a classroom teacher?)

8. Instructional Leadership and Maximizing Your Leadership Team (What is the role of my administrative leadership team toward establishing a culture of instructional leadership?)

9. Instructional Leadership and Maximizing Your Instructional Coaches (How am I utilizing my instructional coaches and what measures have I put in place for them to be optimally successful?)

10. Instructional Leadership and Your Teachers' Perceptions of Who You Are as Instructional Coach (How do the teachers that I supervise perceive me as an Instructional leader?)

As significant as instructional leadership is to the academic progress of a school, depending upon the prevailing culture of the school, instructionally leadership can prove quite challenging to engage in consistently for school leaders. In this session, Principal Kafele will engage participants in a discussion on the role of the administrative leadership team toward the development of a sustained culture of instructional leadership throughout the school. Potential subtopics included:

• Does my leadership team function as a team in the truest sense of the word or are we simply a collection of individuals?

• Is my leadership team comprised of competing priorities or is it understood that student achievement and the continued improvement of instruction is our main priority after student safety?

• Do my leadership team members possess the skillsets to be proficient instructional leaders?

• As a leadership team, are we continually collaborating on what effective pedagogy looks like?

• What is the mission of my school and is it known and embraced by my leadership team and the entire school community?

• What is the vision of my school and is it known and embraced by my leadership team and the entire school community?

• What are the academic goals and objectives of my school and are they known and embraced by my leadership team and the entire school community?

• To what extent does my leadership team engage in ongoing school-level planning?

• What programs and activities does my leadership team have in place that help to deter undesirable student behaviors?

• In what ways does my leadership team keep parents and key members of the community engaged in our work?"

Based on Principal Kafele’s best-selling book, Is My School a Better School BECAUSE I Lead It?, Principal Kafele will challenge each principal and assistant principal to examine their own leadership identity, presence, impact, mission, purpose, vision and value as the leaders of their schools, which will include discussions on whether or not they have in fact defined these leadership attributes within themselves. The entire workshop is highly engaging and interactive and the keynote is high-energy. It promises to inspire principals and assistant principals to think deeply and critically about their roles as leaders of their schools and whether or not their schools are better schools because they are the leaders of them. As Principal Kafele states in his opening, “My intent is to create discomfort, tension and uneasiness in the room. Inspiration lasts for a few hours. Discomfort, tension and uneasiness endure until they are corrected.”

In this empowering keynote address, Principal Kafele will state emphatically to educators at all levels that each of them possess the power toward completely shifting the trajectory of a child. He will encourage them to reflect upon their initial “why” for entering the world of education and remind them of the significance their “why” holds toward student success throughout the course of each and every day, while ultimately taking children to heights previously unimagined. Principal Kafele’s message will remind each participant of their greatness as practitioners despite the challenges, obstacles, pressures and demands of teaching, leading and counseling in the midst of a global pandemic.

It is impossible for each student to perform optimally when they are forced to learn in inequitable learning environments. This session will show school leaders how to "lead for equity" toward ensuring that each of their learners is afforded equitable learning opportunities in their classrooms. With the achievement gap continuing to be the greatest challenge for educational leaders nationally, this session makes the argument that there will never be any significant closure to the achievement gap as long as equitable practices fail to be central components of the leadership of the building, and teaching and learning in the classroom. Equity must, therefore, be the "best friend" of each of the students in the building.