with Vince Bustamante and Dr. Tim Cusack
Dates: October 17, 24, November 7, 14
Time: 3:45-5:15
Target Audience: New, aspiring, and veteran teachers, principals and district-level administrators interested in developing leadership skills for the principalship or district administration.
No cost – Sponsored by the Building Education Leaders for Alaska (BELA) Project
One optional university credit: $164
The best way to prepare aspiring leaders is to offer hands-on opportunities to develop the skills they’ll need when they’re in charge. Being a building or central office leader calls for originality, innovation, and the ability to work under pressure. Yet so few assistant principals and other aspiring leaders actually get to develop these competencies in meaningful ways that prepare them to lead a school or district with confidence.
Join Vince Bustamante and Dr. Tim Cusack, the authors of Leader Ready, as they present a framework that walks aspiring school leaders along the path to strong and independent leadership by using a mix of professional knowledge, modeling, coaching, guided experiences, and mastery experiences.
Each 90-minute session will explore a different facet of the “Roots of School Leadership”. Whether a new leader, aspiring leader, or veteran leader this webinar series will provide context and actionable items to better prepare aspiring leaders for a potential role as principal, central office leader or superintendent.
Sessions
- Session 1: Raising the Bar on Leadership Standards
- Session 2: Creating a Culture for Implementation
- Session 3: Planning Guided Leadership Experiences
- Session 4: Attaining Mastery Experience
Session 1: Raising the Bar on Leadership Standards
During this session, Tim and Vince will expand on the importance of knowing your leadership standards as the foundation for leadership development. Leadership standards are meant to establish a systematic, rigorous, and practical approach to increasing leadership readiness. They also can be used as a metric to assess a leader’s overall performance. This session will explore how leveraging local or state standards can be the foundation of which we will build a common language of leadership.
Session 2: Creating a Culture for Implementation
To create the right conditions for leadership development, we need to be acutely aware of the current context of our leaders and their understanding of where they are in their leadership development. This session will explore how the skill, will, and thrill of aspiring leaders can be complimented by an environment that is conducive to leadership development.
Session 3:Planning Guided Leadership Experiences
Mentorship and coaching are key to the development of aspiring leaders. This session will explore how to leverage vicarious leadership experiences and design experiences where aspiring leaders gradually assume more leadership responsibilities. Participants will have the opportunity to construct guided leadership experiences that are conducive to the development of leaders in their own schools or districts.
Session 4: Attaining Mastery Experiences
Mastery is often easy to define but more difficult to observe and assess. This workshop will examine the guided leadership experiences and leverage expert noticing to determine when leaders have moved from capacity potential to capacity realization. When aspiring leaders can put theory into practice is when there is true mastery attainment.
Vince Bustamante, M.Ed. is an instructional coach, curriculum content developer, and author who resides in Calgary, Canada. He is the co-author of two bestselling books: Great Teaching by Design and The Assessment Playbook for Distance and Blended Learning. Vince is passionate about implementation, assessment and creating classroom environments that foster deep learning experiences where teachers understand and evaluate their impact. He specializes in working with teachers, leadership teams, schools and school districts as they seek to implement high impact strategies and systems for school improvement.
Tim Cusack, Ph.D has over 30 years of experience in K-12 education and has served school divisions in northern, southern, and central Alberta. Since 1993 his experience includes service as a classroom teacher, department head, assistant principal, principal, and assistant superintendent (learning services). For the past three years he has served as Deputy Chief Superintendent of Edmonton Catholic Schools and is currently the Dean of Education at Concordia University of Edmonton.
Dr. Cusack earned his Doctorate in Education at the University of Portland in 2020. His research centered on understanding the self efficacy of school-based leaders, particularly assistant principals. His research is featured in a forthcoming Corwin publication – Leader Ready: Four Pathways to Prepare Aspiring Leaders (May, 2023). Dr. Cusack’s research interests also include: teacher mentorship, curriculum assessment, leadership development, as well as systems change and school improvement.