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LEADER OF SELF
AN INTEGRATED APPROACH TO INSTRUCTIONAL LEADERSHIP
In this post-pandemic era of educational leadership overwhelm for school leaders is as ubiquitous as the Chromebooks missing a key.
Your leadership and the work you do with your team should set you on FIRE
With passion and possibility for what you
can create in schools and on behalf of kids . . .
Instead of feeling ready to walk out of school to become a barista, never to return again.
As instructional coaches, we are leaders, we are culture creators, and we are change makers. We get to go first and we get to do it differently.
What if your team of instructional coaches and
leaders had the vibe of:
Oh yeah, these are my people & we are united in our work.
School leadership teams are CULTURE CREATORS
when your team is aligned in:
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What you see as possible in the post pandemic landscape.
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Your heart's desire for world class instruction creating the next generation of world class citizens.
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“I have your back, and you have mine.” Because we were never meant to go it alone in life or leadership.
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Taking right action because you know leaders go first, they don’t shy away from upset but lean in the willingness to create something new through honest, integrous conversations.
The system actually gets recreated in a way that works for kids and teachers.
Think:
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Coaches have the tools to help heal and support the frustrations and fears of the teacher so that the instructional moves come with ease and clarity.
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Staff lounges becomes places of encouragement and cheer formerly reserved for Friday happy hours.
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Student learning actually feels . . . accelerated.
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Walking through your halls gives you quick hits of community, inspiration, and joy.
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As a leader, you feel a sense of peace knowing you would put your own children in any classroom of your school.
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Excellence and growth becomes a collective commitment, not a stale initiative.
This stands in stark contrast
To where many of my clients are before coming to work with me
Where:
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Leaders and coaching are trying to be liked all the time and feel like high expectations and a good relationship with those they coach can’t live together.
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Each leadership team member is doing so many things on their own, disconnected from the support the team could provide.
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Professionalism is about compliance and has school leaders pitted against teachers.
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Everyone is drowning in google docs but nothing tangible seems to be getting better.
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They think, “I can’t do the real work until teachers trust me.” And they get stuck here for a long time.
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They think, “I can’t do the real work until teachers trust me.” And they get stuck here for a long time.
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The educator culture of humility keeps coaches and leaders from confidently sharing their expertise for fear of making someone feel badly that they don’t have the same knowledge.
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The team shuts down and gets quiet when conflict occurs.
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Coaches spend most of the time trying to manage the emotions and reactions of the teachers they coach and instructional progress is slow.
As instructional coaches, we are leaders, we are culture creators, and we are change makers.
We get to go first and we get to do it differently.
And that’s the mission and vision of Integrative Instructional Coaching.
Integrative Instructional Coaching is a holistic approach to tending to the mind and skill, emotions and body, strategy and spirit of the teacher and the coach. It rejects dogma and embraces nuance and agility. It teaches coaches and leaders how to recreate and build a new dream in a time of uncertainty, upset, and frustration.
Have you or one of your coaches say, “Teachers need me to be a therapist! And I’m supposed to be their coach!”
Um, yep, we all pretty much we ALL need a therapist after global upheaval.
So we can stay mad and resistant to the current state . . .
Or we can grow into the necessary skills and ways of being that will set us free and have us meeting the needs of those we coach and lead.
Now your analytical brain is probably telling you about all the terrible data you’re trying to correct for and the instructional best practices and new curriculums you are trying to teach teachers and how there is no way to take on a new initiative, let alone one that might encourage you to slow down, to take a moment to dream, to consider how you want to feel in your leadership and service.
But for you smarty analytical types, just check in
How’s the rush and the hurry going?
Is analysis alone getting you the adult culture of your dreams?
Are students thriving?
Is it boosting teacher retention rates?
Are you thriving?
See, the old way is open to recreation exactly at the point where it isn’t working for you or for those you serve.
Integration relies on the willingness to embrace both/and thinking.
It asks you to be bigger than either/or.
It calls us to consider what to keep, what to let go of, and to step into all the places where we can be bigger, truer versions of ourselves.
WHAT DOES
INTEGRATIVE MEAN?
Adaptive & Technical
Culture & Instruction
Teachers Feel Good &
Do Better
Relationship & Feedback
Holistic & Success
Joy & Proficiency
The thing the pandemic really showed us is that we don’t actually know how this life is going to go and with that in mind, we deserve to have every bit of support, nourishment, care, and, of course, strategy along the way that sets us up to feel our best, do our best, and become our best in coaching and leadership.
SO IF YOU NEED A PERMISSION SLIP HERE IT IS
Do you, be you, give boldly to the world and don’t pay too much attention to those who long for the old ways.
How does this all work?
Space doesn’t change everything, but it shifts a lot!
Retreat is about leaving your school buildings so that you can sink deeply into your own learning and time with your team. With no walkie talks blaring in the background!
You and your team of coaches and leaders will be welcomed to my retreat space in Denver, for two days of immersive work or I’ll come to your area and find us a perfect retreat spot.
Each retreat is intimate and the content is dialed in to meet the needs of your team.
You won’t be sitting in a conference room with hundreds of strangers.
Integrative Instructional Coaching Retreat
Day 1:
On the first day of our work together we get grounded in what your coaching and leadership model currently looks like at your school. We identify what is working and areas of stuck-ness.
It’s from there that we explore adaptive leadership concepts like:
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Team and coaching agreements
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The art and practice of listening deeply to what teachers are saying
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Approaches to boosting your emotional intelligence
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Developing a clear, shared purpose for our team and for our coaching
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Strategies for responding to resistance
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Learning how to build a dynamic relationship with those we coach rather than a relationship based on being liked and never causing upset
Throughout the day we engage in conversation about what the pandemic changed in our schools and in our leadership. We consider things that were working but we forgot about in a time of crisis AND talk about what we need now that is unique to the post pandemic time.
Everything Maggie does as a coach and facilitator during the retreat models strategies and approaches that can be taken back to the school buildings. So the day follows the best approach to learning: model, discussion and reflection, practice. You will leave with a coaching plan to implement and we will reflect on the impact in our second session.
Integrative Instructional Coaching Retreat
Day 2:
If you are doing your retreat in Denver, we will host your second retreat day, six-weeks after our first retreat day. The six week structure allows you to practice and reflect on the skills and approaches you learned on day one. If I am traveling to you, we will host the two days consecutively.
Day two will we will rise up onto the balcony to survey the methods and why behind the approaches you learned. You will have time to ask questions, get feedback and advice on what you’ve tried so far, and practice with me and your team. We will codify your team’s vision for what it means to coach and lead at your school and help you make tactical plans for supporting each teacher you support.
You will leave with clarity and aligned actions ready to go!
“I can’t do more day of this alone.”
- School leaders everywhere
If this is you, I have the best news!
That was never the freaking game! Let’s play to have you winning, held, honored, and tapped into your highest vision for your service and leadership. I coach a select group of school and district leaders who are ready to go all in on a new way forward.
Putting the Pieces Together
When it seems like so much has to shift, I can sit shoulder to shoulder with you to design a visionary way forward so you and your team have a road map to the school, the culture, the student experience and successes you have longed for.
When you come on retreat with me, you will get results.
You will experience that burn of transformation and the tingle of something new.
The results you can expect:
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Instructional coaching sessions tend to the holistic needs of the teacher all while moving the teacher’s instructional practice forward.
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The desired school culture is clear, vibrant, and alive.
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Coaches have the tools and approaches to coaching they need when adult trauma is present in a session or when conflict or breakdown occur. (Not sure what adult trauma looks like? Think: crying, anger, shutdown)
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It’s no longer taboo to tend to the mind, body, and spirit of all humans serving within schools.
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Your leadership team has a unified vision for coaching and leadership.
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Why now?
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The post-pandemic era of education is just as unique as the pandemic itself. It requires new skills and practices that allow for schools to be hubs of transformation and joy rather than overwhelm and suffering.
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Our students need us to lead. They need teachers who are supported in dynamic and powerful ways so that instruction improves quickly.
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There has never been a better time to recreate the system from the inside out.
You won’t be sitting in a chair made for a kindergartner!
What’s included in the two days of my Integrative Instructional Coaching Retreat?
Space designed for teams of adult humans. Clean, cozy, and lovely.
Lunch that meets the dietary needs of each team member.
Snacks. So. Many. Snacks.
Curriculum outlines, journals, and pens. Retreats are low-tech times and I have your back with everything you need.
What is the cost of the two-day Integrative Instructional Coaching Retreat?
Meet Your Conspirator in Rising ...Like a Freaking Phoenix
HI! I’m Maggie Riley
I’m the perfect partner for you in the post-pandemic era of education because I know what it’s like to love the work & what it’s like to want to leave the work.
I was the teacher who loved being in the classroom and got a swift kick in my leadership pants when I stepped out of my room and learned what was going on in other classrooms.
Once I figured out how to change my relationship with the adventures of instructional coaching and school leadership, my joy, impact, and commitment to being one of the school’s best changed.
I realized leadership wasn’t about:
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Being liked all of the time (no one ever is)
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Doing things on my own, disconnected from support and community.
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Perfectly designed strategy codified in a zillion google docs.
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Making the work of coaching teachers fit into a perfect paradigm of old school professionalism.
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Not getting muddy in the arena.
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Doing things right or falling into the shame spiral of being wrong.
Instead, the promise & delight of leadership is:
Gut wrenching and glorious inquiry into who I am as a person, what I stand for, and what values rise high above the smog of the system to guide and redirect me.
The chance to integrate the lessons of my whole life, not keep myself stuck in rigid compartmentalization.
Seeing the fascinating puzzle of systems and people and service as a great mystery to contribute to over and over again.
Freedom from perfection and liberation into the land of soul, integrity, and recreation.
I became the leader I longed for when I trained as a holistic life coach and brought those skills to the land of instructional coaching. Not one of us abandons our fear, pain, stories about ourselves, or generational mindsets and beliefs when we walk into work. All of us come with us to work.
That means that as leaders we need to know how to coach for self-love, boundaries, clearing, and breakthroughs just as much as we need to know how to target and teach the next instructional step.
Now here’s where people get me wrong.
Because I love adaptive work, work of the mind, body, and spirit, does NOT disconnect me from my conviction that excellence matters.
The origin of teacher trauma is not feeling or being effective. Most data shows it. Many of us have or are failing kids.
And that is heartbreaking for every person who’s given their days to teaching kids.
That’s why my work is INTEGRATION. Integrating our instructional skill with our support skill, our mind with our heart, our vision with our actions.
That work, the work Integrative Leadership, that’s where we rise and recreate.
