{"id":144981,"date":"2019-01-11T08:27:50","date_gmt":"2019-01-11T13:27:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=144981"},"modified":"2023-07-05T13:58:51","modified_gmt":"2023-07-05T17:58:51","slug":"principal-preparation-program-undergoes-redesign","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2019\/01\/principal-preparation-program-undergoes-redesign\/","title":{"rendered":"Principal Preparation Program Undergoes Redesign"},"content":{"rendered":"

The field of education has been going through constant evaluation and evolution since 1983, when \u201cA Nation At Risk<\/a>\u201d was published.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat report sounded the alarm that the United States was not at the top of the food chain anymore when it comes to education,\u201d says Richard Gonzales, director of UConn\u2019s Neag School of Education leadership preparation program.<\/p>\n

Since then, responses to the report have encompassed curriculum changes and standards, teacher preparation, and in the early 2000s, a growing emphasis on leadership \u2013 in particular the role and training of school principals.<\/p>\n

UConn is now one of seven universities that are part of The Wallace Foundation\u2019s University Principal Preparation Initiative, a four-year, $48.5-million program aimed at improving training for aspiring administrators. The Foundation encourages administrator training that emphasizes the practical aspects of the job and includes instructors who have been school leaders themselves.<\/p>\n

Overall, the universities in the initiative have developed stronger partnerships with districts where their graduates will lead schools. Some have made headway in curriculum design, a key component of the initiative. All have measured their programs against state and national leadership standards to identify areas to work on, according to Education Week<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are doing things today that will become the norm for the next 10 to 20 years \u2013 and that is huge,\u201d says Gonzales, who oversees the UConn Administrator Preparation Program<\/a> (UCAPP).<\/p>\n

UCAPP has redesigned its program, introducing changes that will go into effect this July. Among those, UCAPP students will now have leadership coaches, who will guide them in planning and strategizing. The coaches, like the program\u2019s mentors of the past, will continue to be selected from among current and retired principals and administrators.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are shifting from supervision to coaching in terms of how our UCAPP students are taught, and the coaching is going to be around authentic tasks,\u201d says Gonzales. \u201cWe are taking the current administrator evaluations, and redesigning our coursework to align with that.\u201d<\/p>\n

The curriculum redesign factors in data about instructional leadership, talent management, and organizational leadership \u2013 the domains that have been prioritized by the State of Connecticut, says Gonzales.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe school systems in Hartford, Meriden, and New Haven\u00a0 helped us redesign our curriculum so students know what it takes to be a principal in a city like that,\u201d says Gonzales. \u201cOur program became much more contextually based. Instead of teaching evaluation and supervision, we used the actual instruments and resources that principals use.\u201d<\/p>\n

UCAPP enrolls current teachers who have an average of eight to 12 years in the classroom and have shown evidence of leadership work. Cohorts of students in six different Connecticut towns \u2013 Hartford, New Haven, Stamford, Guilford, East Hartford, and West Hartford \u2013 take two years of classwork, and do a 12-credit internship to complete the program.<\/p>\n

\u201cFirst and foremost, a good principal understands the social aspect of the work, and they are grounded in the communities in which they work and serve,\u201d says Gonzales. \u201cWe emphasize early on that the communities in which you serve are your constituencies. You serve that area, the people \u2013 all of them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gonzales notes that UConn’s principal preparation program prioritizes leadership coaching from the beginning.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe coaching provides us with a day-to-day look at what goes on at a school,\u201d says Kathryn Lenehan \u201910 (ED), \u201911 MA, a second-grade teacher at Lake Garda School in Burlington, whose coach is Kelly Sanders \u201912, a principal of the West District School in Farmington, and a UCAPP graduate.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s nice to work with someone who has been trained,\u201d says Lenehan. \u201cWe have conversations like \u2018why did you do this?\u2019 or \u2018is this the first time it happened?\u2019 \u2013 information you can use when you are principal of a school someday.\u201d<\/p>\n

“It\u2019s an exciting, challenging time in education and to be a principal,” adds Megan Baker \u201912, principal of Tourtellotte Memorial High School in Thompson, “and having ‘courageous conversations’ with teachers is a big part of it.”<\/p>\n

Gonzales says one of the best compliments he receives about UCAPP is about the way it values teachers. \u201cUCAPP understands that a principal\u2019s role is about supporting the teacher, the student, and the curriculum,” he says. “Principals are there to create the conditions for everything to work.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As one of seven institutions that are part of a national University Principal Preparation Initiative, UConn’s updated program will emphasize practical training and coaching from current or former school administrators.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":123,"featured_media":144017,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2427,1855,2225],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[2113],"class_list":["post-144981","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-educational-leadership","category-neag","category-uconn-storrs"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-14 15:51:22","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144981","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/123"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=144981"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144981\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":145146,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144981\/revisions\/145146"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/144017"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=144981"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=144981"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=144981"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=144981"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=144981"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}