Developing Leaders

I've had the privilege of being developed by some pretty amazing educational leaders myself, and am grateful to get to pay it forward. I've had opportunities to develop instructional leaders at the school level, leaders of KIPP regions nationwide and managers for the sub-teams of the Learning Experience Design team at Great Minds. In turn, my own practice has been positively impacted by my work with each of them.  


Developing leaders means providing coaching and mentorship, support and resources, and targeted - often role-specific - professional development. It also means making sure leaders know and capitalize on their strengths, have safe opportunities for reflection and improving their areas of growth, and have authentic opportunities to practice the work their roles require.


The impact of planning intentionally for the development of a pipeline of strong and effective leaders is equipping them to lead others, to lead positive change, to lead pursuit of equitable instruction for all students, and to lead improvement of student outcomes. 


1.  Regional Math Leader Community (KIPP)

2.  School-based Math Leaders (KIPP)

2. LED Manager Development (Great Minds)

1. Regional Math Leader Community (nationwide)

As the Senior Director of K - 12 at the KIPP Foundation, I drove impact at scale by leveraging Regional Math Leaders nationwide. Regional Math Leaders are an integral part of regional leadership teams and are responsible for driving the region's math vision and outcomes - coaching school-based instructional leaders, creating region-wide professional development, developing teacher practice, and driving student outcomes.  They also support other regional leaders in understanding and fulfilling role-specific responsibilities within the region's math strategy.

I defined outcomes for teachers, students, and instructional leaders with input from regional math leaders; created a strategic plan that included action steps, resources, timelines, benchmarks, and metrics; was intentional with the development of the regional math leaders individually according to their individual contexts, as well as their development as a community of learners.

"Going into the conversation, I felt pretty overwhelmed by the scope of the work the was ahead of us to move this discourse model in math forward and through this conversation with Emilee, I really walked away with these very concrete steps and this deep feeling of we can do this. Every step of the way, Emilee was there helping me take this vision ... and actually put it into effect."  -Neily Boyd, Regional Math Leader for KIPP Nashville 

"When I was a regional math leader, she supported me in creating systems to support schools in successful curriculum implementation, developing the mathematical content knowledge and pedagogy of teachers and leaders and investing them in a vision for equitable mathematics instruction. I attribute a lot of our success and growth in mathematics instruction to my work with Emilee and her support of me." -Melissa White, Manager, Learning Experience Design Team at Great Minds, former Regional Math Leader for KIPP Jacksonville


"She was intentional about connecting the math RCLs with resources and experiences so that we could share our learnings and we not only benefited from each other as a result, but Emilee was also communicating to us that we were doing work worth sharing and that meant something because of the amount of respect that we have for her and her opinion."  -Matthew Leftwich, Secondary Regional Math Leader for KIPP Atlanta


"I really feel like that [RCL convening in New Orleans] set a really strong foundation for me to move my work forward here in the Bay." - Gabe Rodriguez, Regional Math Leader for KIPP San Francisco

Regional Math Lead Community Anchor Documents

This set of artifacts shows the goals and metrics for the Regional Math Lead Professional Learning Community, the slide deck for the kick-off and orientation to our work together, the overview of the year, and the scope and sequence outlined by quarter. of learners.

RCL Headline_Beliefs_Metrics.pdf

KIPP Regional Math Lead Community Metrics

Regional Content Lead Community_KSS.pptx

Regional Math Leader Community Kick-off

Regional Math Lead Community Program Overview 19-20.docx

Program Overview

Regional Math Lead - Scope and Sequence.docx

Scope and Sequence

Regional Math Leader Community Professional Learning and Supporting Resources

The artifacts below, all aligned with the Regional Math Leader scope and sequence, and metrics, represent professional learning opportunities and support resources I either created or co-created for Regional Math Leaders to help develop leader knowledge of writing criteria for success grounded in conceptual understanding, capacity for leading internalization meetings at scale, and evolving their math content knowledge across grades.

Lesson Internalization and Planning Meeting Protocol - Math.docx

Lesson Internalization and Planning Protocol

Lesson Internalization Meeting Observation Tool

Assessing Proficiency with Leading Internalization

Action Planning Protocol with Comments_Facilitator Version.docx

Regional Math Lead School Visit

CFS and using CFS Session.pptx

Professional Learning Session: Practicing with Criteria for Success

Topic Internalization Support for Leaders.mov

Topic Internalization Support for KIPP Leaders

Broader Regional Leadership Team Supports: 

All leaders on the regional leadership team have role-specific responsibilities in supporting students, teachers, and strategic initiatives for improving outcomes. They are supported in large part by regional math leaders, and it was always a privilege to be able to structure targeted visits to support all leaders in knowledge-building, collaboration, and their specific roles. 

These artifacts represent planning and structures around region visits.

KIPP Math Site Visit Protocol 2019-2020.pdf

Excerpt from my growth partnership with KIPP Atlanta

2.  School-Based Instructional Leaders

I had the opportunity to coach and work with school-based instructional leaders across the country in a number of capacities as the Regional Math Leader for KIPP NYC and the Senior Director of K - 12 Math at the KIPP Foundation. The artifacts below show ways that I worked to scale knowledge-building, planning practices, problem-solving and discourse-based instruction, and an approach to state test preparation ("Performance Training") that revolved around conceptual understanding and student metacognition across multiple regions.

"You said 'don't let a schedule or a protocol keep you from giving feedback to teachers.' My best O3 was in 15 minutes and we got to the root, he understood the misconception and his next lesson was great." -Brittany Brooks, Assistant Principal, KIPP Jacksonville


"Instead of being an evaluator, you are a participant in the learning environment. And both the kids and the teacher and any principals or staff observing with you were better because of that.  … One of the things I want to take way form our time together over the last few years is your ability to focus on the root of an understanding of a concept and why that was so important to not just get the answer right but to be able to draw from learning that may have happened a year or two before and focus on how this grade level concept then prepares them for what’s coming in another year or two so that there’s a straight line from Kindergarten all the way up to when kids leave us." -Abe Manlove, Assistant Principal, KIPP Jacksonville 


"Our [sessions] felt great this week ...You showed your talent as a teacher and you won everyone over.  Thank you for taking on the job and thank you for pushing us to move forward." -Frank Corcoran, Principal, KIPP Academy Middle School, NYC

Grade 1_Module 5.pdf

Problem Progressions, Grade 1: Developing the Story of Math

Grade K_M1.pdf

Content Companion for Eureka Math, Grade 8: Building Knowledge of the Content

ES Timing and Structure Document (3).docx

Timing and Structure Documents by Curriculum Component

KIPP ATL_Ruck_Launch of LI.mp4

Lesson Internalization Meeting

I supported the school leader in planning for this, then we filmed it and used it for nationwide leader development.

KIPP Leader PD

Performance Training Materials.pdf

Performance Training Teacher Guide excerpt

Pilot Problem-Based Curriculum

I adapted a Eureka Math grade 6 module to start daily with a problem-solving task, invited THE Peg Smith to kick off our pilot with a problem-solving PD, created lesson plans and structures for leaders to plan with teachers, and coached with leaders daily in classrooms. Positive feedback from teachers led to a more extensive pilot the following year, and later, KIPP Nashville piloted this as well.

Diamond_CFS_Internalization_Audio Only.mov

Lesson Internalization Meeting (audio only)

I supported the school leader in planning for this, then we filmed it and used it for nationwide leader development. 

3. LED Manager Development

Once I expanded the Learning Experience Design team from a team of four primarily creating workshop-style sessions to sixteen team members additionally writing coaching sessions and support tools, curating a video library of classroom footage, creating a video library for the Great Minds website, and producing on-demand professional learning sessions, we needed more than one team leader to ensure we could maintain the efficiency, quality, support, communication, and alignment that had become our standard. I promoted three amazing managers, using a cross-team process designed to diminish bias, to lead our sub-teams and work-streams to even greater success and impact for teachers, students, and leaders. 

The included artifacts represent some of the strategic development of the managers of the Learning Experience Design team.

"As my manager, Emilee prioritizes my growth and is relentless in curating development opportunities for myself and my colleagues." - Tracy Homm, Manager, Learning Experience Design Team at Great Minds, formal Regional Math Lead for KIPP Philadelphia

"In my role as a manager of people who create learning experiences to support successful implementation of curricula, Emilee has supported me in creating a cohesive, goal-driven team. She coaches me in leading through my strengths and helping my team to identify and capitalize on their own strengths. Through her feedback, she has helped me to ensure that the learning experiences that my team creates provide practical solutions that support our customers in actualizing a vision for equitable instruction for all students." - Melissa White, Manager, Learning Experience Design Team, former Regional Math Leader for KIPP Jacksonville 


Manager Guidance

LED Manager Guidance.docx
Manager Expectations.docx

Manager Expectations

Developing Manager Thinking: Scenarios

Scenarios_11_15_22_LED Managers.pptx