Mira Education

Work Smarter, Not Harder

This blog is part of our Unlocking Collective Leadership: 7 Conditions for Lasting Impact series, highlighting the conditions that help P20 systems move from individual effort to shared leadership. 

The Role of Work Structures in Collective Leadership

A solid strategy won’t get far without the right structures in place to support it. Educators are expected to collaborate, lead, and improve, but even the best efforts stall out when the systems around them don’t support that work. Work structures, such as how we schedule time, set priorities, and make decisions, are what make sustainable improvement possible. In collective leadership, those structures are intentionally designed to support shared ownership of the work.

Time and effort are precious. The right structures protect them. Here’s how to build routines that make school improvement work possible.

What is Work Structures?

Work Structures are the fourth condition of collective leadership. They include the rhythms and routines that guide how a school or team functions, such as calendars, schedules, meeting structures, planning processes, and communication norms.

In collective leadership, these structures are designed to support shared priorities. That means:

  • Protecting time for collaboration
  • Aligning day-to-day operations with long-term goals
  • Reducing friction and confusion in how work gets done

When this condition is in place, teams gain clarity, coherence, and the capacity to lead well, without burning out. Work feels purposeful. Meetings get smarter. And people can spend less time navigating logistics and more time driving improvements.

One school that has put this condition into action is Maryville Elementary, whose intentional focus on instructional improvement has led to increased staff and student engagement, as well as a decrease in student referrals. 

Work Structures in Practice 

At Maryville Elementary, sustainable work was about more than managing busy schedules. It began with aligning around shared priorities for feedback and instructional expertise. The staff came together to reimagine observation practices, increasing two-way informal feedback among teachers. This shift strengthened staff culture and had a clear, positive impact on students.

Through behavioral learning walks, the school cultivated a culture of vulnerability and shared learning, intentionally focusing on improving student engagement and outcomes.

The results speak volumes: academic performance rose from Below Average to Average on the 2024-2025 School Report Card, and student referrals dropped by more than 76 percent.

When teams prioritize collaboration and continuous learning, meaningful change follows. This is the power of collective leadership in action.

Pressure or Progress? A Team Check-In on Work Structures

Gather the team and ask the following prompts:

  • What gets prioritized in our schedule—and what consistently gets squeezed out?
  • How do our routines and meetings support (or stall) meaningful work?
  • Which structures help us work collaboratively, and which reinforce silos?

Resources for Vision and Strategy

Ready to take a closer look at how your team’s work structures support shared leadership? Use this reflection tool to track your time, identify misaligned routines, and find one shift you can make toward stronger collaboration.

Download the Time Tracker Tool

Want tools, examples, and reflection prompts delivered straight to your inbox? Subscribe to the Unlocking Collective Leadership email series to dig deeper into each condition and explore how to bring collective leadership to life in your school or district.

by mira-mariah

A team of educators reimagine their capacity and resources

Building the Foundation for Sustainable School Improvement

This blog is part of our Unlocking Collective Leadership: 7 Conditions for Lasting Impact series, highlighting the conditions that help P20 systems move from individual effort to shared leadership. 

Making Capacity and Resources Work for Your Team

A bold vision means little without the capacity to act on it. Educators are often asked to lead, innovate, and improve without the time, tools, or staffing to do it well. The result? Frustration, burnout, and stalled momentum.

Collective leadership doesn’t mean doing more with less. It means building the conditions that make school improvement not just possible, but sustainable. This means starting with real investment in time, tools, and support.

Let’s break down what this means and how it shows up in practice.

What is Capacity and Resources?

Collaboration becomes more than a buzzword when schools have the right resources in the right places and the flexibility to use them well. It becomes a daily habit.

Capacity and Resources is the third condition of collective leadership. It’s about how people, time, funding, space, and expertise are leveraged to support shared goals. When this condition is off, progress can feel like pushing uphill.
Some questions to consider:

  • Do your structures match your goals?
  • Are you investing in people’s ability to lead, or asking them to figure it out on the margins?

Without a clear foundation for support, even the strongest teams can’t sustain momentum.
One school that tackled this head-on was Walker-Gamble Elementary, where rethinking how time was used became a breakthrough for both student growth and teacher collaboration.

Capacity and Resources in Practice

When schools rethink how they use what they already have, like time, talent, and trust, big things can happen. In our partner work, we’ve seen how capacity unlocks stronger collaboration and smarter problem-solving. 

Walker-Gamble, a school we’ve partnered with through the South Carolina Department of Education’s Collective Leadership Initiative, was committed to seeing its students grow. For their team, this meant prioritizing the amount and quality of instructional time in each day’s schedule. Through a time auditing process, their team reimagined their bell schedule together to protect planning time and provide additional time for cross-team collaboration. 

The result? A sharper focus on instruction, stronger team cohesion, and national recognition. Walker-Gamble was named a 2023 National ESEA Distinguished School for Exceptional Student Performance and Academic Growth and continues to see steady gains in student outcomes and staff engagement.

Curious what this looks like in practice? Read more about Walker-Gamble’s collective leadership journey.

Pressure or Possibility? A Team Check-In on Capacity

When the work starts to feel unsustainable or stalled, it’s often a signal that something deeper needs adjusting. Use these questions to reflect as a team:

  • Where does leadership work currently happen in our schedule, and where does it get squeezed out? Naming this openly can reveal the invisible toll it’s taking on your team.
  • Do our structures and staffing models support distributed leadership or reinforce traditional hierarchies? You might find it’s time to rethink who has protected time, decision-making power, or access to information.
  • What are the “unspoken” resource barriers our team faces, and how are we addressing them? Whether it’s time, tech, PD, or trust—naming these gaps is the first step to closing them.

Collective leadership requires shared effort, but it also requires shared investment. These questions can help you identify what’s missing and where to begin making real, structural shifts.

Resources for Capacity and Resources

Ready to take a closer look at your own team’s capacity and resources? Use this tool to explore the structures that support or limit your team’s capacity. We recommend using this tool with a cross-role group and identifying one small shift you can make to increase shared leadership by reallocating time, tools, or support.

Download the Capacity and Resources Reflection Tool

Want tools, examples, and reflection prompts delivered straight to your inbox? Subscribe to the Unlocking Collective Leadership email series to dig deeper into each condition and explore how to bring collective leadership to life in your school or district.

by mira-mariah

Leadership that Moves School Improvement Forward

This blog is part of our Unlocking Collective Leadership: 7 Conditions for Lasting Impact series, highlighting the conditions that help P20 systems move from individual effort to shared leadership. 

Driving Change through Supportive Administration

Educators are constantly navigating a flood of shifting demands. New initiatives. Urgent needs. Limited time. In all this churn, collaboration helps, but it’s not enough. Collective leadership thrives when leaders don’t just “allow” change, but actively support and champion it.

Supportive administration isn’t about checking boxes or offering an open-door policy; it’s about fostering a culture of trust and respect. It’s about ensuring every educator knows their work is seen, valued, and aligned to shared goals.

What is Supportive Administration?

Supportive Administration is the second condition of collective leadership. It refers to the visible, formal support that leaders provide to staff across all roles.
In collective leadership, this looks like:

  • Aligning on shared goals
  • Creating clear, coordinated plans
  • Backing teams with the resources and structures they need to lead

It’s about more than agreement—it’s about shared direction and active reinforcement. When formal leaders and staff are moving together with clarity and consistency, schools are better positioned to turn ideas into action and make improvement stick.

One district that’s seen the impact of this approach firsthand is Clarendon County, where leaders prioritized formal supports to grow teacher leadership across their schools.

Supportive Administration in Practice 

Over the last several years, the Clarendon County School District has undergone multiple consolidations, resulting in shifts in both its district identity and the way school teams work together. Despite this unexpected change, the district continues to experience growth.

During the 2023–2024 school year, the number of teachers who saw themselves as leaders jumped by 78%, speaking to the power and impact of a supportive leadership team.

When administrators model trust, make space for teacher voice, and follow through on shared decisions, leadership doesn’t just expand; it sticks. Clarendon County’s experience shows what’s possible when support isn’t just offered, but embedded.

Making Leadership Visible

Being a supportive administrator takes more than good intentions. It requires visible, tangible practices that help staff feel seen, supported, and aligned. Use these questions with your team or as part of an individual reflection to examine how leadership shows up in your daily work.

  1. What does visible support look like to your team, and are they experiencing it consistently?
  2. How is space created for others to lead?
  3. Are your systems and routines reinforcing collective ownership, or working against it?
  4. What’s one tangible thing you can do this week to show alignment and trust?

Resources for Supportive Administration

Inviting others into your practice allows you to see the work from a different perspective. You can build trust across teams and invite others into the improvement process by fostering intentional feedback loops. This tool walks leaders through a simple process to invite others into decision-making, starting with small steps and building to deeper, sustained collaboration. Use it to build trust, create feedback loops, and shift the leadership culture in your school.

Download the facilitation tool to make your leadership more inclusive, visible, and trusted.

Want help bringing collective leadership to life in your system? Learn more about Mira Education’s approach or reach out to start a conversation.

by mira-mariah

Educators engage in a collective leadership discussion

What is Collective Leadership?

This blog is part of our Unlocking Collective Leadership: 7 Conditions for Lasting Impact series, highlighting the conditions that help P20 systems move from individual effort to shared leadership. 

A Lever for School Improvement

Long-lasting change doesn’t come from a program binder. It comes from people. At Mira Education, we’ve learned that unlocking a team’s full potential starts with how leadership is shared and supported.
Every school has untapped wisdom and expertise. What if we stopped overlooking it and started organizing leadership around it? Collective leadership isn’t a new program. Instead, it’s an approach that reimagines how teams work together.

From Buy-in to Co-ownership 

Collective leadership allows educators to share the work in a way that builds ownership rather than buy-in. It’s more than task delegation. It unleashes educators’ collective expertise to solve problems and serve each student better.

Collective leadership thrives in schools where staff culture supports shared responsibility across roles, not just titles. In this approach, a team of educators shares leadership work in ways that move learners and learning communities toward improvement and innovation.

The Mira Education collective leadership development model aligns school and systems teams’ practice to support the following seven conditions shown to build collective efficacy, educator retention, and effective instructional and leadership practice:

  • Vision and strategy
  • Supportive administration
  • Capacity and resources
  • Work structures
  • Relationships and social norms
  • Shared influence
  • Orientation toward improvement 

Collective Leadership in Practice 

Since 2017, Mira Education, in partnership with the South Carolina Department of Education, has supported schools across the state through the Collective Leadership Initiative (CLI). By building systems rooted in collective leadership, participating schools have seen measurable improvements in both staff and student outcomes.

Notably, between 2018 and 2023, the percentage of teachers who identified as leaders increased by 71%. In the 2023–2024 school year, 94% of CLI schools improved teacher retention.

These shifts in staff culture are translating into stronger student outcomes. Three CLI schools have earned national recognition for student achievement, and one school reduced office referrals by more than 75% within two years of joining the initiative.

Collective leadership is not just about improving schools. It’s transforming how they work.

Small Shifts to Activate Collective Leadership

The best way to start with collective leadership isn’t with a full rollout plan, but honest dialogue. The goal isn’t to have all the answers. It’s to surface the expertise already in the room and think differently about how you work together.

Here are some small but impactful next steps:

Gather a team of educators in different roles (administrators, teachers, instructional coaches, etc.) to discuss the following prompts:

  • What untapped expertise already exists in our school/district? What evidence do we have about the presence of that expertise? (Note: Avoid relying on word-of-mouth.)
  • Where and in what ways do we leverage expertise, and how can we expand those opportunities for others?
  • What ongoing challenge do we face that would benefit from leveraging expertise to explore potential solutions? 

Use the conditions matrix and this discussion tool to identify a condition your team wants to focus on to address your identified ongoing challenge.

Resources for Collective Leadership

Creating change and improvement is complex, challenging work. Collective leadership provides mutual support toward shared goals, allowing teachers and administrators to build collective efficacy and work better together. This discussion tool is a reflection guide to help you approach and navigate the Collective Leadership Conditions Matrix to gain insight into your team’s work.

Want help bringing collective leadership to life in your system? Learn more about Mira Education’s approach or reach out to start a conversation.

by mira-mariah

Two educators collaborate on vision and strategy

From Compliance to Co-Ownership

This blog is part of our Unlocking Collective Leadership: 7 Conditions for Lasting Impact series, highlighting the conditions that help P20 systems move from individual effort to shared leadership. 

Why Shared Vision and Strategy Matter

A vision statement on a poster doesn’t mean much unless the people doing the work helped write it. In collective leadership, how we build a vision matters just as much as what it says.

As Margaret Wheatley put it, “No one is successful if they merely present a plan in finished form to others…” That’s why one of the core conditions of collective leadership is co-created vision and strategy. Let’s explore what that looks like in action.

What is Vision and Strategy?

Vision and Strategy comprise the first condition of collective leadership. It’s the shared North Star that guides a team’s decisions, priorities, and daily work.

In collective leadership, this means:

  • Co-created: Developed collaboratively by the full team, across roles and titles
  • Clearly defined: Specific enough to inform decisions and drive alignment
  • Communicated and lived: Used consistently to shape culture, strategy, and practice

When teams get this right, everyone knows where they’re headed—and how they’ll get there together.

One school that embraced this condition early in its collective leadership journey is Dr. Rose Wilder Elementary School, where clarity of vision laid the foundation for deeper collaboration and stronger results.

Vision and Strategy in Practice 

While few teams have the authority to craft a new vision statement for their school or district, all should have the opportunity to define what the vision means for their team in their current time and context. As a result, they’re more likely to have the chance to develop the strategy intended to meet the goals aligned with the vision.

Take Dr. Rose Wilder Elementary in Clarendon County. When two schools merged, the leadership team knew they couldn’t just graft one school’s identity onto another. Instead, they needed to create something new, together. So they approached the moment with intention:

  • They set a mindset across the community: We’re building a new school,
  • School leaders met one-on-one with staff from the former Summerton school to learn what was working and what needed attention,
  • Committed to preserving effective practices while addressing persistent pain points, and
  • Opened up the conversation, hosting family town halls to share transparently and invite feedback. 

This wasn’t vision on paper. This was vision lived out loud. And the results spoke volumes: for the first time ever, Dr. Rose Wilder earned an Excellent rating on the state report card.

When vision is co-created and strategy is shared, results don’t just improve; they stick.

Turning Vision and Strategy Into Shared Action 

Most teams don’t need a new vision. They need a shared one. Whether you’re launching a new initiative, tackling a persistent challenge, or navigating change, co-creating vision and strategy helps your team move in the same direction. 

Gather the team and start here:

  • What is our team currently working on, or something coming up, that could benefit from a co-created vision and strategy?
  • If this effort we are currently working on were wildly successful, what would you see, hear, think, and say?
  • What are the next three to five action steps to make the shared vision a reality?
  • What can each team member contribute to ensure the wildly successful vision is realized?
  • What resources and/or supports are needed to make those contributions?

Resources for Vision and Strategy

Ready to start the conversation? This facilitation guide offers step-by-step support for co-creating vision and strategy with your team, from identifying key stakeholders to building consensus. It’s designed to help teams move from ideas to shared action through a collective leadership lens.

Download the Vision and Strategy Facilitation Guide

Want tools, examples, and reflection prompts delivered straight to your inbox? Subscribe to the Unlocking Collective Leadership email series to dig deeper into each condition and explore how to bring collective leadership to life in your school or district.

by mira-mariah

School leadership team reflecting together. Collective leadership in action.

A Better Way to Finish Strong

How Collective Leadership Helps School Leaders Finish Strong

The month of May is a marathon, not a sprint. Testing, hiring, celebrations, and next-year planning. It’s all happening at once, and the pressure to “finish strong” is real.

But for too many leaders, “finishing strong” gets translated into “doing more,” and often doing so alone.

There’s another way.

What Collective Leadership Looks Like at the End of the Year

The work may not be easier, but leaders in these schools and districts aren’t just surviving the end of the year. Rather, they’re designing it with their teams to co-own the work and the results. Here’s what that looks like in practice:

Desiloed Decision-Making

Instead of tackling hiring, planning, and budgeting in parallel conversations, they bring the work into one shared frame. In our work with the University of Maryland School Improvement Leadership Academy, principals and assistant principals focus on competency-based professional learning to sharpen their skills in inclusive leadership practice.  

“SILA provided research with practical skills to improve school systems. With the skills I developed in SILA, we were able to increase our attendance rate this year from 70.1% to 83.1%.” Allison Johnson, J.D., NBCT, Assistant Principal, Anne Arundel County Public Schools

Distributed Reflection

Every team, not just administrators or the central office, has space to look back, name what worked, and surface what needs attention.

As part of our partnership with the South Carolina Department of Education, 31 schools across 15 districts are implementing collective leadership practices to spur improvement and reflect on what their schools need to be a thriving learning community. 

Centered co-ownership

When the temptation to “just get it done” kicks in, they ask: Who else could lead this? And more importantly, who is already leading, but hasn’t been named?

By coming together to view student data as a team, Scott’s Branch Middle School was able to share to increase its capacity to support each student.  

“Student achievement was always the core of our work. But the problem was we were all on our own islands. …Doing the data walls helped us see a clear picture of what each child needed.”—Caroline Mack, Teacher of the Year, Scott’s Branch Middle High School

When leaders aren’t carrying the load alone, they’re part of a system that holds together, even in the toughest weeks.

Try this

End-of-year pressure can make us default to “just get it done.” But co-leadership requires us to slow down and shift the approach. Try this:

  • Map out a key end-of-year task that’s currently sitting on your plate. It could be anything from finalizing budgets to planning PD or preparing graduation events.
  • Identify two other team members already contributing to this task, whether actively or behind the scenes.
  • Name one action you can take to share the ownership of this task with them publicly: acknowledging their role in a meeting, shifting responsibility, or asking for their input on key decisions.

The goal isn’t just to share the workload. The goal is to co-own the process and outcomes as a team.

Learn more about how schools are implementing collective leadership to drive real change.

by mira-mariah

Education leader guiding a team through change with confidence and collaboration in a school setting.

Uncertainty ≠ Instability: 4 Key Strategies for Education Leaders to Support Staff Through Change

Change in education is constant, but uncertainty doesn’t have to lead to instability or getting stuck. Education leaders play a crucial role in navigating the unpredictable nature of school improvement, curriculum shifts, and policy changes. By focusing on what’s within your control and supporting your staff through the unknown, you can lead confidently, reduce stress, and promote a healthy, collaborative school culture.

Here are four actionable strategies to help education leaders support their teams during uncertain times and create stability in change.

1. Focus on What You Can Control: Leadership Strategies for Success

In uncertain times, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed by factors beyond your control, like changes in education policy, fluctuating budgets, or evolving state mandates. However, focusing on what you can control is the most effective way to maintain stability within your team.

You can’t control everything, but you can control your leadership approach: how you communicate, how you advocate for resources, and how you support your staff. By focusing on these areas, you can avoid burnout and build a positive, proactive school culture.

Key Takeaway:

In times of uncertainty, education leaders should focus on the leadership actions and decisions within their control. If it is not yours to do, it is not yours to worry about. This maximizes the impact you can have and fosters resilience.

2. Communicate Early and Often: Building Trust with Transparent Leadership

Effective communication is one of an education leader’s most important tools during change. Proactive communication ensures that staff members are informed, reducing confusion and anxiety about potential shifts.

Whether it’s about curriculum updates, policy changes, or school-wide initiatives, keep your team in the loop early and often. By being transparent and consistent, you prevent assumptions and encourage a culture of trust. Staff should know they can rely on you for updates and information.

Key Takeaway:

Communication is the foundation of trust. Early and frequent updates are key to keeping staff informed and reducing uncertainty during periods of change.

3. Avoid Siloed Decision-Making: Promoting Collaboration Across Teams

Siloed decision-making can lead to misalignment and frustration, especially when facing uncertain times. When teams or leaders work in isolation, it often results in confusion and resistance to change. Instead, promote collaboration across teams and departments to ensure alignment and foster a shared sense of ownership.

Involve staff in decision-making processes early on and create open channels for feedback and collaboration. This ensures decisions are made with collective input, which boosts morale and reduces the risk of misunderstandings.

Key Takeaway:

Collaboration is essential for navigating uncertainty. Break down silos by ensuring decisions are made with input from all stakeholders, aligning your efforts across teams and departments.

4. Make Small Shifts for Meaningful Improvement: Sustainable School Change

Instead of waiting for large-scale changes, focus on small, incremental shifts that will drive long-term improvement. In times of uncertainty, making steady, manageable changes is more sustainable and less disruptive.

Rather than overhauling systems or processes, make consistent adjustments that can be refined over time. Whether revising a program, testing a new strategy, or making small tweaks to daily operations, these incremental changes lead to sustainable growth.

Key Takeaway:

Sustainable change comes from small, intentional shifts. Focus on incremental improvements rather than major disruptions for more significant long-term impact.

Looking for More Resources?

Leading during uncertain times doesn’t have to be overwhelming. By focusing on what you can control, communicating effectively, promoting collaboration, and making incremental improvements, you can guide your staff through unpredictable changes confidently and clearly.

For more tools and resources on leading through school change and supporting your team during uncertainty, visit www.miraeducation.org. Our free resources can help you lead for sustainable change and build a stronger, more resilient school culture.

by mira-mariah

School leadership team removing barriers to improvement

Removing Barriers to Impact: How Education Leaders Can Find Focus in the Chaos

Why Education Leaders Get Stuck

Education leadership is filled with competing priorities — curriculum implementation, teacher retention, student success, and operational challenges. With so much happening at once, even the best plans can stall.

Maybe a new initiative isn’t gaining traction. Maybe a curriculum shift hasn’t delivered the expected student growth. Or maybe, despite endless meetings, the same challenges persist year after year.

When this happens, it’s often not because the ideas are wrong — it’s because barriers, like follow-through, misalignment, and outside factors, prevent real progress.

The solution? Removing barriers to impact — focusing on what truly matters and clearing the path for meaningful change.

How to Remove Barriers and Gain Momentum

As a design and implementation partner, we’ve helped school and district leaders refine their vision and strategy to meet their unique needs. The key? Harnessing collective leadership, aligning expertise with goals, and identifying what’s standing in the way of progress.

Here are three powerful ways education leaders can remove barriers, focus their efforts, and drive sustainable impact:

1. Leverage Expertise: Leadership is a Team Sport

The best school and district leaders don’t try to do it all alone. Collective leadership ensures that the right people are making decisions in their areas of expertise. When teams collaborate effectively, they remove roadblocks that slow down progress.

Action Step: Identify key strengths within your team. Who can take the lead in specific areas? How can you build leadership capacity across your school or district?

2. Step Back & Reflect: Use Data to Identify Roadblocks

Great education leaders don’t just collect data — they use it to pinpoint barriers and adjust strategies. Reflection isn’t just about checking progress; it’s about identifying what’s holding your team back.

Action Step: Schedule a data-driven reflection session with your team. Use both qualitative and quantitative data to assess progress, celebrate small wins, and adjust your school improvement plan accordingly. Download this tool to guide your session. 

3. Turn Reflection into Action: Remove What No Longer Works

Reflection without action leads to frustration. The most effective education leaders take insights and turn them into concrete next steps—especially when it means eliminating outdated practices.

Action Step: After every strategy session, define one priority, assign ownership, and set a clear timeline for action. Removing unnecessary tasks and refining focus helps teams gain momentum. Download this tool to help you sort through initiatives and tasks to refine or remove. 

Removing Barriers to Impact: A Mindset Shift for Education Leaders

Progress doesn’t come from doing more — it comes from focusing on what truly moves the needle. By stepping back, leveraging your team, and committing to actionable school leadership strategies, you can clear obstacles and create lasting change.

Feeling stuck? Let’s remove the barriers to impact together. Connect with Mira Education to build momentum and implement high-impact, sustainable school improvement solutions.

by mira-mariah

Two seated adults talk to a student about collective leadership in practice at his school.

The Power of School Learning Labs

Observing Collective Leadership in Practice

How do schools make meaningful, sustainable change?

It’s a question educators ask themselves every school year. 

In our work with partners, we’ve learned that big, innovative ideas do not always shake up a system. It’s the small shifts in practice that lead to sustainable school improvement. 

Over the last seven years, Mira Education has partnered with the South Carolina Department of Education (SCDE) to support schools in making small shifts for significant impact through a collective leadership approach. 

Collective leadership is a research-based approach that harnesses the expertise of each team member to multiply leadership capacity and bring more perspectives into the decision-making process. 

Collective Leadership Initiative

The Collective Leadership Initiative (CLI) was established in 2018, and 64 schools have participated in this partnership between Mira Education and the SCDE.  As part of CLI, school teams across South Carolina come together to identify a Priority of Practice (PoP) for their schools. The PoP is a growth area for school teams will focus on for two years. Teams identify the actions needed to address their PoP and plan for small, sustainable shifts in their collective practice. To ensure there are a variety of perspectives and expertise at the table, CLI teams are comprised of educators across roles – administrators, teachers, and support staff.

But what does collective leadership look like in practice?

Learning Labs

To support teams in answering this question and to offer inspiration for shared work, CLI schools participate in learning labs. Learning labs are school visits to other CLI schools to obserce the impact of collective leadership in classrooms in real time.

Recently, Mira Education and SCDE co-facilitated four learning labs at Blythewood High School, Horse Creek Academy, J.C. Lynch Elementary School, and Maryville Elementary School. While each host campus had its own style, all participants observed classrooms, heard from staff and students, and asked questions about the host campus’ collective leadership practice.

Additionally, each school team examined its efficacy survey data. The efficacy survey is an anonymous survey administered by CLI that measures the degree to which teachers believe they impact one another and student learning.

This data-reflection is part of the CLI planning process. Schools will come together again later this month to adjust their approach and identify potential shifts to their PoP to better support their team. 

Learning labs effectively allow educators to see collective leadership in practice. They help the theoretical approaches learned in CLI become tangible and, more importantly, actionable.

For support identifying a Priority of Practice and to learn more about applying a collective leadership lens to your work, email info@miraeducation.org.

by mira-mariah

2024 Annual Report

As 2025 begins, the Mira Education team is inspired by the work accomplished in 2024 and encouraged by what’s to come. Read the 2024 Annual Report to see how collective leadership positively impacted students, schools, and districts in our work with partners.

READ MORE

by mira-mariah