Learning

Supporting Education Leaders Through West Michigan Leadership Academy (WMLA)

Grant Recipient

The Leadership Academy

Awarded Amount

$1,902,400 over seven years

In 2018, the Steelcase Foundation partnered with a local foundation to establish the West Michigan Leadership Academy (WMLA) to develop the capacity of district leaders in Grand Rapids with a goal of strengthening student learning and achievement for students in high needs school districts. WMLA engaged principals and school leaders throughout Kent County to connect both within and across districts to envision the structures, systems, and practices needed to support equitable student learning and achievement.

Each year, approximately 20 principals and school leaders joined a Professional Learning Network (PLN) for collaborative learning sessions around growing leadership capacity and advancing equity and anti-racist practices in their schools and districts. Participants also connected one-on-one with a coach to support work in their individual district.

Hear from WMLA participants, coaches and staff as they share their learnings through this effort.

Staff

Lauren McElrath

Director of Leadership Development

Annalise Kontras

Senior Director of Leadership Development and WMLA Coaching

The West Michigan Leadership Academy, an initiative of The Leadership Academy, works to develop school leaders’ commitment and capacity to be culturally responsive, antiracist leaders who confront systemic inequities and engage and inspire their school communities in envisioning and enacting the structures, systems, and practices required to achieve equitable student opportunities and outcomes.

WMLA launched in 2017 as a partnership between five Grand Rapids-area school districts, Kent ISD, and local foundations, including the Steelcase Foundation. Local funders and education leaders conceptualized a system of leadership support, recognizing that growing the capacity of school and district leaders was essential to realizing the full impact of other investments and initiatives around school improvement.

Over the last six years, WMLA’s core program, the School Leader Fellowship, has provided sustained professional learning and coaching to more than 60 school and district leaders in 12 school districts within Kent County. Through our additional programming, including customized services with school districts, we have supported upwards of 150 school and district staff members across the region.

We envision a future where every child in Kent County, regardless of race, culture, or identity, has access to the liberating, responsive learning experiences they need to thrive. We purposely and powerfully develop the leadership needed to realize that vision.

WMLA School Leader Fellowship

  • Three-year program of professional learning and leadership coaching for high-performing and high-potential school leaders. The Fellowship has two components: 1 year of cohort-based Professional Learning Sessions and 3 years of 1-1 leadership coaching.
  • Four cohorts of School Leadership Fellows, 60 in total, across 12 districts and organizations.

Courageous Leadership Learning Series (CLLS)

  • During the 2020-21 school year and continuing in 2022-23, we offered a suite of programming options aimed at growing our Fellows’ and Alumni’s leadership in leading through crisis with vision and courage to create a new, equitable reality.
  • CLLS program offerings include:
    • Professional Learning Communities on culturally responsive instruction, designing professional development, family and community partnerships, advancing equity in systems, and restorative practices.
    • Speaker Series, including webinars on Grading for Equity, Culturally Responsive Virtual Instruction, and Critical Consciousness.
    • On-Site Observation Days, day-long instructional learning walks that strengthen participants’ lens of observing for culturally responsive and cultivating culturally responsive instruction.
    • Instructional Rounds Networks, a year-long network experience of instructional observation, reflection, and planning for the next level of work.
    • External professional learning opportunities, including group registration and post-meeting turnkey session for UnboundED’s Unfinished Learning virtual conference, in collaboration with Leading Educators.

Customized District Services

  • In support of system-level leadership development we have offered customized supports to participating districts, aligned to their distinct needs and change strategy:
    • New Principal Institute, a 3-day institute for newly hired principals on developing visionary entry plans.
    • Sharpening your Equity Lens, a professional learning series for district and school leaders on equitable leadership.
    • Foundations of Principal Supervisor, a year-long national cohort-based professional learning program that supports district leaders in developing coaching and supervision.
    • Coaching for Culturally Responsive Practice, two-day training for leadership coaches and school and district leaders.
    • Hiring Manager Training, half-day training on practices for hiring culturally responsive, equity-minded candidates and mitigating bias for system-level hiring managers.
    • Executive Coaching for district leaders.
    • Customized professional learning sessions for leaders, teachers, staff, and students.
      Future Work
      Our ongoing work will be supporting school and system leaders across the county in cultivating the skills, knowledge, self-insight, and courage to transform inequitable schooling into liberating education for all students, centering those who have been historically minoritized.
      We will continue to provide this support through sustained and deliberate professional learning and coaching, deepened partnerships with other organization, and with the adaptability required to be responsive to leaders’ needs while holding steady to our vision.

Future Work

  • Our ongoing work will be supporting school and system leaders across the county in cultivating the skills, knowledge, self-insight, and courage to transform inequitable schooling into liberating education for all students, centering those who have been historically minoritized. 
  • We will continue to provide this support through sustained and deliberate professional learning and coaching, deepened partnerships with other organization, and with the adaptability required to be responsive to leaders’ needs while holding steady to our vision.
  • Individual school leaders alone can accomplish great things, yet true systems change requires leaders at every level, from students and families to teachers and district leaders, to invest in the work in aligned and purposeful ways. 
  • Redesigning the system of schooling requires sustained support for individual leaders in understanding themselves, systems leadership, and managing change. In contrast with the quick-fix mentality of many professional development experiences, WMLA’s leadership development programming is an investment in deep change work over time. 
  • Consistent with research, we learned that coaching and professional learning are most effective when participants have agency of choice around professional growth opportunities.
  • Leadership coaching accelerates professional learning by supporting leaders in putting new ideas and skills into practice. Our coaching creates an environment of support and challenge that facilitates leaders’ self-reflection and behavioral change needed to reach their personal, school, and district-level goals. We’ve found that school leaders are hungry for this individualized thought partnership and critical friendship. Engaging with leaders and walking alongside them in this adaptive work is an honor.
  • Leading in the current moment is especially challenging: School and district leaders have been faced with leading their communities through multiple years of unprecedented uncertainty and change as the COVID-19 pandemic, the tense political climate, and the continued reckoning with the enduring effects of centuries of racism and oppression are rapidly changing the ways in which students and educators experience schooling and the world around them. The task before leaders each day is weighty, daunting, and unrelenting. It also is full of potential to harness for change. In addition to navigating unique pressing challenges, effective leadership in this moment is about envisioning, organizing, and creating more just and equitable education spaces and systems.
  • Reflective of our belief that growth as a leader for equity is a lifelong process of learning and unlearning, we continually revise and update our professional learning curriculum and offerings to be responsive to the needs of leaders and reflective of the latest research and thinking around culturally responsive schooling.
  • As a project team and organization, we also continually engage in the self-work of reflecting on our assumptions and mental models around race and equity, identifying and challenging the characteristics of white dominant culture that manifest in our lives and education systems, and understanding our own multifaceted identities. 

 

  • In districts across the county, school leaders deeply committed to the self and system work of challenging inequities are creating nurturing, rigorous educational environments for students. They lead inspirationally through pressing challenges with bold visions. We are honored to support, uplift, and expand their impactful work; and we enthusiastically look forward to the future work of building the collective of leaders who are bringing about culturally responsive, liberating educational systems and schools. 

Coaches

Kathryn Curry

Year started as a WMLA Coach: 2019

Kristy Newman

Year started as a WMLA Coach: 2021

Michael McIntosh

Year started as a WMLA Coach: 2021

Steve Hoelscher

Year started as a WMLA Coach: 2018

Participants

Allison Woodside de Carrillo

Cohort: 4

Position and School District:
Principal, Ada Vista Elementary School, Forest Hills Public Schools

April Stevens

Cohort: 4

Position and School District:
Director of Student Services, Cedar Springs Public Schools

Aquan Grant

Cohort: 4

Position and School District:
Director of School Quality, National Heritage Academies

Danielle Hendry

Cohort: 2

Position and School District:
Former principal and current Director of HR and Legal Services at the Kent Intermediate School District

Jim Jensen

Cohort: 4

Position and School District:
Principal, Godfrey-Lee Lee Middle School

Jodi LaFeldt

Cohort: 4

Position and School District:
Director of Special Education, Comstock Park Public Schools

Jonathan Haga

Cohort: 2

Position and School District:
Principal of Central Middle School, Forest Hills Public Schools

Jordan Stuhan

Cohort: 4

Position and School District:
Middle School/High School Principal, Kent City Community Schools

Kenyatta Hill-Hall

Cohort: 2

Position and School District:
Principal at Grand Rapids University Preparatory Academy, Grand Rapids Public Schools

Lametria J. Eaddy, Ph.D.

Cohort: 3

Position and School District:
Head of School/Principal at Coit Creative Arts Academy, Grand Rapids Public Schools

Lorenzo Bradshaw

Cohort: 2

Position and School District:
Principal, Brookwood Elementary, Kentwood Public Schools

Nick Orlowski

Cohort: 4

Position and School District:
Director of School Leadership, CS Partners, NexTech High School of Grand Rapids

Rhonda Varney

Cohort: 4

Position and School District:
Assistant Principal, Wyoming High School, Wyoming Public Schools

Sara Larkin

Cohort: 4

Position and School District:
Supervisor of Special Education, Kentwood Public Schools

Sara Van

Cohort: 4

Position and School District:
Assistant Principal, Kent Career Tech Center, Kent ISD

Toni Moore

Cohort: 2

Position and School District:
Director of Special Education, Kentwood Public Schools

Veola McFerrin-Nelson

Cohort: 3

Position and School District:
Assistant Principal, Godwin Heights Public Schools