with Nancy Barker
February 10, 17, 24 & March 03
Time: 3:45 – 5:15 p.m. Alaska Time
Target Audience: K-12 Administration and Teacher Leaders
Credit: One optional university credit is available for attending all webinars and participating in online discussions and assignments ($145)
Join author, Kate Barker, of Principaled: Navigating the Leadership Learning Curve for an engaging and enlightening four-part webinar series on how to elevate your leadership through reflecting, focusing, connecting and caring. We know that educational leaders are critical to school success however, we rarely discuss how challenging this work can be and how to utilize and build upon our own talents to elevate our communities. Join Kate and Alaskan leaders to identify where you are on the learning curve and how to authentically grow your practice. Every leader who is willing to put in the work can achieve incredible outcomes for students, staff and families all while fostering a vibrant school culture. This series will go in depth on how to propel your leadership skills to impact not only student achievement but a positive and inclusive culture where everyone belongs.
Learning Intentions:
Often, educational leaders think they have to choose either high academic expectations or a culture that is steeped in caring, belonging and fun. Seasoned educator, Kate Barker, will share how you can and should have both. She does this through a strengths based model that starts with the individual leader identifying their strengths, passion and purpose in a meaningful way. She then moves to strategies to identify opportunities in the school community and a process of prioritizing what to focus on first. By drawing attention to the human side of leaders, she asks others to connect to their own authentic style by building connections with staff, students and families all while holding the community to high standards. She is a data driven, research-rich practitioner who will talk not just about ideas, but true implementation of best practices, with real life examples that will illuminate a path to success.
Success Criteria:
? Session participants will go in depth into four key strategies to finding success in the principalship: reflect, focus, connect, and care.
? Session participants will learn ways to reflect and refine their practice, how to find their people and the development of mentors.
? Session participants will learn strategies to bring focus to their work through identifying their clarity of purpose, how to go deep with their work, and how to work through their strengths.
? Session participants will learn about the power of being connected by developing their network and committing to their learning
When someone asks Kate Barker how many children she has, she replies, “Five hundred thirty-seven, plus two.” As well as having two children of her own, Kate is currently a principal in Portland, Oregon. She has been an educator for the past thirty years all in an incredibly diverse urban area. Kate has spent her career dedicated to supporting and learning from her community. She has been a fourth- and fifth-grade teacher and a district office language arts and federal grants leader. In the past seventeen years, she has lovingly served as a principal at three different buildings. In her current building, she works with a vibrant community of preschool through fifth-grade students. Seventy-five percent of the families experience poverty, and twenty-eight different languages are spoken. Many of her students, whose basic needs are not met, are steeped in trauma. And yet, the students in her school consistently outperform state averages. She holds a master’s in special education and is a champion for building a culture that includes all students and families. She believes that everything starts with a genuine relationship, and connections and high expectations are at the core of her community’s success.
Kate speaks on many topics which include multi-tiered systems of academic and behavior support, systems and structures for successful schools, navigating personalities and having hard conversations, inclusion of all children without tears, setting up a preschool within your school, capitalizing on community partners to support schools and much more! She also is active in her state’s educational leadership organization, COSA, and has held multiple offices to support principals around her state. She is an adjunct professor for aspiring administrations and has enjoyed mentoring principals and teacher leaders. Another one of Kate’s passions is rescuing food that would otherwise end up in landfills and redistributing that food to hun