A neighborhood engagement supervisor who offers college students a direct say over how her Arizona district spends tens of 1000’s of {dollars}.
An govt director of sustainability who helps her college students channel their local weather change anxiousness into tangible motion.
A director of household and social companies whose expertise rising up with a schizophrenic mom informs her empathetic—and efficient—method to absenteeism.
These are only a few of the district leaders Schooling Week has acknowledged in recent times by its annual EdWeek Leaders To Be taught From report. The following report will publish in February 2025, with nominations due September 9, 2024. (See under for the nomination type.)
Nominees should be faculty district leaders. Anybody—trainer, father or mother, neighborhood member, member of the family, enterprise accomplice, nonprofit group, scholar, vendor, and present or former colleague can submit a nomination.
Prior to now, the Schooling Week report has profiled a mixture of district leaders, from superintendents and curriculum administrators to arts supervisors and meals service administrators.
The following report will construct on a more-than-decade-long custom of shining a highlight on among the most modern and efficient methods leaders across the nation are enhancing college students’ educational achievement and well-being, smoothing the transition to school and careers, and bridging yawning fairness gaps.
‘Continuously looking for finest practices’
John Kuhn, the superintendent of the Mineral Wells Unbiased faculty district in rural Texas, nominated Natalie Griffin for her work enhancing bilingual training, together with recruiting and retaining bilingual academics. Her efforts helped English learners carry out on par with, and even higher than, their friends who should not nonetheless studying English in core content material areas like English language arts and math.
Earlier than Griffin took over management of the district’s bilingual work, Kuhn mentioned “we had been simply type of going by the motions” when it got here to that inhabitants. Kuhn let Griffin know he needed these college students to be a precedence and “she simply took my expectations and left me within the mud.”
Kuhn had been searching for methods to carry up her work however discovered “there’s not sufficient alternatives to pat individuals on the again in a significant approach,” he mentioned.
“As a small city [leader] you do all this difficult work and blood, sweat, and tears and you understand, you get a paycheck and also you get individuals domestically saying, ‘Hey, we such as you. We recognize what you do.’ However [EdWeek Leaders To Learn From is] only a degree of consideration and celebration” that leaders like Griffin “aren’t used to getting,” Kuhn mentioned.
Terry Grier, a 2015 Chief to Be taught From, has nominated two others: Andrew Houlihan and Ben Thigpen, each superintendents in North Carolina.
“It’s one of many premier recognition applications within the nation,” Grier mentioned, partially, as a result of it provides takeaways for others. “As a pacesetter, it’s best to continually be looking for finest practices. It won’t suit your district precisely the way in which that somebody [has] accomplished it some place else. However you would possibly be capable of modify it to the place it helps you get nice outcomes.”
