Today, Nancy Gutierrez, National Leadership Development Strategist at the NYC Leadership Academy (NYCLA), is presenting at Harvard Graduate School of Education’s (HGSE) School Turnaround Leaders (STL) Institute. Nancy will join Harvard faculty and other expert practitioners to help close to 200 school and district leaders develop actionable plans to turn underperforming schools into places where students thrive and stakeholders are engaged.

“Understanding the underpinnings of school turnaround is the first step in implementing policies and practices that ignite change,” says Nancy. “I am honored to be on faculty with the HGSE’s STL Institute and excited to work with school- and district-level decision makers who have a direct and daily impact on our most vulnerable students.” This is Nancy’s third year on faculty with the STL Institute.

Nancy will lead two sessions intended to help leaders think through the essential components of school turnaround.

1)      The Turnaround Leader: Participants will investigate the knowledge, skills and dispositions needed to rapidly and dramatically lead turnaround in a context plagued by persistent underperformance. The session will challenge participants to think through their schools’ and districts’ contextual elements, consider the characteristics sought in effective school leaders, and these characteristics’ impact on persistent underperformance.

2)      Theory of Action: Having a school improvement strategy requires a courageous and well-articulated theory of action. This session will challenge participants to explore the concept of a theory of action (the series of assumptions each leader believes will move their schools from current to future states) to their own contexts and utilize a case study to analyze strategies employed by a turnaround leader to drive effective implementation efforts.

NYCLA is thrilled that Nancy will be sharing her expertise by leading discussions which are critical to successful school turnaround efforts. For more information on Nancy’s presentation or to discuss how NYCLA can support your own school turnaround efforts, contact us.

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