Imagine starting as a new principal, diving headfirst into your role with the enthusiasm of a marathon runner at the starting line. That was me—arriving early, staying late, and working weekends. My hobby? Work. Despite my district director’s advice about balance, relentless dedication was key. I thought my staff would naturally see the heart behind my efforts and my driving purpose. Spoiler alert: They did not.
McREL
Our expert researchers, evaluators, and veteran educators synthesize information gleaned from our research and blend it with best practices gathered from schools and districts around the world to bring you insightful and practical ideas that support changing the odds of success for you and your students. By aligning practice with research, we mix professional wisdom with real world experience to bring you unexpectedly insightful and uncommonly practical ideas that offer ways to build student resiliency, close achievement gaps, implement retention strategies, prioritize improvement initiatives, build staff motivation, and interpret data and understand its impact.
As a principal I loved spending time in classrooms. No matter where I was in my headspace, a visit to a classroom was a way for me to instantly ground myself back into my love of learning and reasons for choosing education as a vocation, and the best part—it gave me a chance to watch teachers and students interact and make sense of content.
Cornerstones of effective partnerships––shared vision and goals, complementary strengths, mutual trust and respect––often take years to establish, and even longer to produce meaningful outcomes for those involved. So partnerships that grow stronger over time and build lasting resilience are something to celebrate.
With the right partnership, a comprehensive needs assessment—also known as a holistic school review—can provide valuable insights on a school’s existing strengths and opportunities to elevate performance, insights that can be difficult for a school team to discover on its own due to limited time and capacity, competing priorities, or inherent biases. At its core, a CNA is looking to tell the most complete story of a school—where the school has been, where it is now, and where it’s going, all with an objective lens, said Kristin Rouleau, McREL’s vice president of learning services.
At the end of September, McREL’s work operating the Region 11 and Region 12 Comprehensive Centers (R11CC and R12CC) through federally funded 5-year grants supporting state education agencies concluded. We’re proud of our teams and the capacity they’ve built across 7 states, and we’re honored for the opportunities to learn, work, and collaborate with so many talented educators and leaders.
One year when I was teaching, a student managed to acquire a photo of an answer key during semester finals. Through Snapchat, that answer key quickly circulated through the student body and teachers had less than 24 hours to decide what to do. They were torn about giving the test, knowing they couldn’t rely on the accuracy of the results.
The Trinity School Design Network (TSDN) project, a multiyear cohort-based principal fellowship program, is an example of the importance of flexibility, adaptability, and perseverance. In five years, the project—supported by McREL’s research and program evaluation team—survived a global pandemic, major personnel changes, funding cutbacks, and revised goals, and successfully supported a group of principals who have grown as leaders and become agents of positive change for their schools.