• Convenient, flexible, easy-to-use

  • Online learning that fits
    your schedule
  • Learn wherever and whenever you want
  • Easy-to-use learning platform guides you through the course



• We've helped educators at more than 15,000 schools

  • "This is how I'm going to get my continuing education credits from now on."

    - Wendy J. Cope, French Teacher, Lancaster Catholic High School, Lancaster, PA

  • "This course lives up to its promise. It is real and easy to implement. It's made a big difference in my teaching!"

    - Frank Martin, Principal, The Stevens School

  • "I absolutely love the class I am taking. I am taking it to improve my leadership skills. It's been great!"

    - Connie Cullip, Special Education Supervisor, Rudyard, MI EUPISD




• • "The Coursework is convenient and interesting! I definitely recommend the program."

    - Jennifer Desloges, 7th Grade English Teacher Plymouth Elementary, Plymouth, NH

  • "I am through about 4 lectures and am loving the ease and simplicity of how it all works! Everything is so easy to navigate."

    - LuAnn Funk, 2nd Grade Teacher, Case Avenue Elementary

• • "I took this course with some reservation, but it proved to be very helpful. Some of the simple things that I learned made a huge impact on the amount of energy my students put into learning"

    
    

    "It was easy to do. I got to work at my own pace, explore all the websites and absorb the materials As a 28 year veteran I do believe you can teach old dogs new tricks."

    - Joseph Fusco, Physics Teacher Lodi High School, NJ

Course 1044

Leadership Excellence: Best Practices for Running a Successful School

---

Apply this towards your professional development requirements
(3 credits, 90 hours or certificate of completion)

Tuition: $575 for all 3 modules complete

This convenient, online course, led by three of the nation’s foremost experts and educators, combines the following three learning modules, to give you practical learnings you can put in place immediately:

     1. New Models for Motivating Staff: Successful Strategies and Skills

     2. Guiding Your School through Change: Gaining Buy-in through Staff Involvement

     3. Handling Difficult Parent Conversations: Defusing Anger and Building Trust
         Technology Misconduct in 2009

Running a successful school is a tough assignment. Faced with so many complexities and limited resources, knowing what works, right now, for other educators can be key to leading your school to great accomplishments. This new course shows you the best practices of successful schools in dealing with some of the most common challenges all educators face, giving you school-tested ideas and strategies from the country’s most successful educators and enabling you to conveniently earn professional development credits/hours and Certificates of Completion/Attendance whenever and wherever you like.

What You'll Learn

Inspiring teachers and staff to put forth their best effort every day can be tough. With the success of your school dependent on a host of different people and departments, it's critical that you succeed in getting everyone working towards one common goal. So what's the best way to get buy in and support for your agenda? This module gives you the answers. You'll learn:

• Strategies to overcome difficult workplace relationships
• The keys to breaking down barriers between departments to get agreement
• How to increase support from your team and other teams
• How to best inspire those who aren't living up to expectations

Highlights

Getting colleagues to work with you, not against you

• Creating a "we're in this together" environment that everyone supports
• How simple changes to your tone of voice & body language increases cooperation
• When and how to exercise strategic emotional control

Strengthen workplace relationships by becoming solution focused

• Communicating non-defensively - even in difficult situations
• 6 Common actions that create barriers between work teams
• Moving people from complaining and blaming to problem solving

Communicate effectively through all levels of your organization

• What to do when everyone has different priorities and agendas
• The best ways to prevent disorganized people from derailing your efforts
• Following up: When is the best time? What is the best way?

What You'll Learn

Like employees at any organization, many teachers and staff members fear, hate or just generally resist change. Instead of embracing the opportunities brought about by it, they focus on its negatives. Strong administrators understand this and it helps shape the way they introduce and manage change in their schools and districts. This module is designed to help you lead your school through change - big and small - and gain buy-in and support from some of the toughest resistors: You'll learn the best ways to:

• Gain cooperation and motivate the "foot draggers"
• Avoid the 8 most common reasons change fails
• Overcome the psychological barriers that crush the process of change
• Use the pain caused by change to your advantage

Highlights

Reducing the Drama and Trauma of Change

• Why do people resist change? How can you overcome this?
• Keys to building their trust - even in tough or uncertain times
• Finding key allies to help you with your change efforts

Increase Productivity through Effective Change Management

• Strategies for creating a sense of urgency to change
• How to overcome the most common obstacles to change
• The personalities that will always undermine change

Leading Change: What You Can Do Today

• How do you increase a resistor's enthusiasm and level of commitment?
• How can you anticipate and respond to the inevitable emotional responses?
• Creating short-term wins to get everyone on board for the long term

What You'll Learn

Difficult parent conversations are one of the most challenging and intimidating tasks educators must deal with every day. Defusing an angry, mistrustful or even deceptive parent isn't easy, and avoiding the triggers that can make the situation worse is crucial. Converting a parent adversary into a working partner is possible, but it requires essential skills to turn the situation around and build a positive parent/teacher relationship. This module will show you:

• How to deliver bad news about grades, behavior and more
• What triggers conflict with parents and how to stop it before it starts
• Tactics that help control and defuse tense situations
• Specific words and phrases you should and shouldn't use
• How to prepare your faculty & staff for an increase in parent involvement

Highlights

Keys to Defuse Difficult Parent Situations

• Avoiding the "triggers" that only make a bad situation worse
• Improving your effectiveness when communicating with parents
• Dealing with the other "F" word: "You're treating my child unfair!"
• Using your body language to influence the way parents react to your message

Build Positive Relationships with Even the Most Difficult Parents

• What specific words & phrases to develop more productive relationships?
• What are the best ways to build credibility in parents' eyes?
• Putting the power of an apology to work for you
• What should you and your teachers do when the parent is right?

Increase Parental Involvement

• The best ways to inform parents when something goes wrong (or right)
• Proven techniques for promoting positive parental involvement at home
• Encouraging parents to feel welcome at your school
• Getting parents more focused on their children and less focused on running the school

The Virtual Teachers Lounge™

Check in with your peers and get answers to your questions – any time, 24/7. Taking this course will give you exclusive access to the thoughts, insights and experience of other educators and K-12 experts discussing your topics and giving you solutions and ideas for whatever is on your mind. In the Teachers' lounge, you can:

• Learn new, working strategies and solutions from other educators – live!
• Get answers to your toughest questions from top K-12 experts
• Discuss course topics with your peers and benefit from their experiences
• Share your success stories and best practices to benefit other teachers and administrators
• Get new perspectives, fresh ideas and guidance – whenever you need it.
• You can log whenever is most convenient for you, 24/7

All you have to do is sign up for this course, and you're in!

Connect with, hear from and get help from you peers.

Materials & Assessment

Lectures	Your lectures, delivered by one of the nation's leading, recognized experts on this topic, are presented in multiple parts to make listening and tracking your progress easier. You can listen to each as often as you like by playing it on your computer, downloading it to your iPod or other MP3 player, even burning it to CD. Listen wherever it is most convenient for you: at home, in your car; at the park; and whenever you like: before or after work, at night or on weekends. Many educators can complete a module in only a week.
Text Resources	Virtual text resources are downloadable and expand on the material covered in your lectures. They may include articles, web links to related materials and web sites, definitions of important terms and concepts, and a bibliography. All materials can be viewed on your computer or downloaded and printed.
Assessment	To receive your Certificate of Completion or Certificate of Attendance and earn Professional Development/Continuing Education units/credits/hours, you will need to complete all assessments and submit all final projects.
Virtual Teachers Lounge	To gain Professional Development credits or hours for any of these three modules, you must participate in the Virtual teachers Lounge discussion for that module. If you are not seeking credits or hours, participation in the Lounge is not mandatory, but you are still welcome to connect with and share your thoughts, questions, insights and experience with your peers at any time.