A School Leader's Guide to Excellence: Collaborating Our Way to Better Schools

This book is an enormous gift. It has the power to change you and your school in ways that will bring vibrancy and excellence to your community. - Lucy Calkins Author of Units of Study for Primary Writing and Units of Study for Teaching Writing, 3 - 5

What a pleasure to read a book on leadership that focuses on ideas so humane, clear, and wise that the reader wonders how we ever made the art of leadership so complicated and didactic.

- Ellin Oliver Keene

Coauthor of Mosaic of Thought, Second Edition

A veritable treasurehouse of practical help, inspiring support and constructive challenge from two high level leaders who have keep completely in touch with the classroom and never lose sight of the humanity of their own learning and leadership.

- Andy Hargreaves
Thomas More Brennan Chair in Education
Boston College

Carmen and Laura translate their soaring vision into a clear, . . . easy-to-use, friendly guide any educator can apply.

- Bill Cirone

Superintendent of Santa Barbara County Office of Education

Is something - no matter how big or small - holding your school back? If so, turn to Carmen Farina and Laura Kotch. In New York City they've transformed struggling schools into excellent schools and made good ones great. And in A School Leader's Guide to Excellence they'll show you a direct, detailed road to improving schoolwide achievement. A School Leader's Guide to Excellence gets at what's really important when you're leading the way to change:

• gathering the energy of the school community for change
• focusing that energy on problem solving
• assuring ownership and sustainability so that new practices last.

Farina and Kotch present their ideas with step-by-step instructions, implementation and evaluation advice, artifacts of their own reform efforts, and all the modifiable forms and documents you'll need. Their strategies will help you:

• form a doable vision of change
• collect information and create urgency
• spark professional conversation and reinforce beliefs
• motivate change through celebration
• involve every staff member
• secure parents' support
• develop a culture of professional learning
• make your job easier by nurturing teacher leaders
• lead in the moment by planning in advance.

Energize your school for change, make reform happen, and make it last. Improve the performance - and the lives - of your students. And do it all with a realistic plan developed by people who've been there and know the way to success. Read A School Leader's Guide to Excellence and raise your school to new heights.