The final bell has rung, and classes have been dismissed — but that doesn’t mean teaching and learning have stopped for school principals.
Four hundred school leaders from 24 states and the District of Columbia are spending two weeks this summer at Relay’s National Principals Academy Fellowship and Leverage Leadership Institute studying to become more effective leaders.
This is the fourth year of the fellowship at Relay Graduate School of Education, a national, accredited, nonprofit institution of higher education serving 1,400 graduate students across 10 campuses in Chicago, Delaware, Denver, Houston, Memphis, Nashville, New Orleans, New York City, Newark, Philadelphia and Camden. Principals are nominated by their school district and then apply for admission to the selective program.
The principals are participating in eight-hour intensive workshops every day. The sessions feature simulations and role play — which equip them with the confidence and leadership skills they need to promote change in their schools and districts. Once the summer session is over, the principals will also engage in four weekend “intersessions” throughout the school year to practice implementing the lessons they have learned.
“Our hope is to build our bench of talent and spread the impact of the program so that participants can go back to their schools and school systems and deliver really strong results for kids,” Anne McCarley, the chief external affairs officer at Relay, said.
Past participants credit the summer fellowship for helping them become more effective leaders.
Kimberly Grayson, the principal at Martin Luther King, Jr. Early College in Denver, Colorado, told the Denver Post that her Relay training helped to increase her school’s teacher retention rate. In three years, the retention rate rose 50 percentage points: from 43% to 93%.
In 2015, another former Fellow, Lamont Browne, was presented with the prestigious Ryan Award for his transformational work as CEO and Executive Director of EastSide Charter School and Family Foundations Academy in Newcastle, Delaware. With Browne at the helm, the academic performance of EastSide Charter improved dramatically: Reading proficiency grew from 28% to 58% , and mathematics proficiency rose from 37% to 63%. Also in 2015, Browne was selected as a charter member of Relay’s Leverage Leadership Fellowship, a small group of exceptional school leaders who have increased student achievement by double digits.
Doranna Tindle, who completed the National Principals Academy Fellowship in 2014, said her experience at Relay helped her prepare her students to graduate. Last year, 97% of her students graduated from Friendship Technology Preparatory Academy in Washington, D.C., and 100% of her students were accepted to college.
“At Tech Prep High, I know that we have become a beacon of opportunity and optimism in an otherwise challenging landscape,” Tindle wrote in a post on Relay’s Facebook page reflecting on her experience with the Fellowship program. “We are creating a legacy that I know matters to our future graduates and the community-at-large. I want college graduation and achievement to be inevitable—unavoidable. Relay has supported this belief with practical strategies that spur on student achievement.”
