During the school year, our team of 22 administrators meets once a month on a Thursday afternoon from 3:00-5:00 p.m. Over the summer, the council meets for a few days of workshops in July and August, bookending vacation time. Like most teams, we seek to minimize adminis-trivia and develop substantive workshop agendas. We also seek to create an inclusive “campfire” atmosphere in which all members of the council relax and contribute.

It was an interesting exercise, in preparation for this Tri-State visit, to review agendas, protocols, and readings from Administrative Council since 2010 when Dr. Shaps became Superintendent. One of the things that we learned, in attempting to piece together paper and electronic files, was the importance of taking time to archive work as we do it! Spotty and incomplete though these records may be, we believe they illustrate the intense, singular focus we’ve maintained on instructional leadership and supervision.

Within each year’s archive, you’ll find myriad professional readings that we’ve digested as a council. Typically, we use a protocol (“Three Levels of Text,” “Four A’s,” etc.) to apply the text to our leadership work, often pooling and comparing artifacts from our schools. Over the years, we have explored pedagogical topics stemming from Research for Better Teaching; the concept of growth mindset through Dweck and Johnston; the neuroscience of feedback and insight through Rock (based on Tri-State conference); the art of professional coaching via Gawande; and the importance of social and emotional learning from Marc Brackett and Linda Lantieri.

Throughout, we seek to do two deceptively “simple” things: apply research and leadership theories to our educational setting and close the “knowing-doing gap” by actually implementing or operationalizing ideas as concrete practices. In other words, it’s one thing to have a great discussion of something at administrative council; it’s another thing altogether to do something differently—and successfully—in our schools as a result. For example, once we understand David Rock’s “SCARF” framework, how do we actually provide status, certainty, autonomy, relatedness, and fairness in post-mini-observation reflecting conferences? This is humbling, but we keep at it!