On average, urban public school principals turnover every 2.5 years. This constant change in leadership, particularly at some of our community’s most challenging schools, makes it difficult to get traction on long-term academic improvements and for all students to be on a path to college and career readiness. The Principal Impact Collaborative (PIC) seeks to address this national and collective local challenge by supporting and developing public school principals, to drive higher retention, improve leadership capacity, increase job satisfaction, and ultimately, drive greater student outcomes.
The PIC Approach
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PIC is a unique professional growth and learning opportunity for principals from North Texas public school districts to work together in small teams to develop and execute a transformative improvement project for their school. Over the two year program, principals in the cohort have dedicated time each month away from their campus to refine their leadership skills and hone their project idea in order to drive impact at their school. PIC’s curriculum provides a multi-disciplinary learning experience that is highly relevant, customized and authentic for participants.
The Principal Impact Collaborative supports principals through three main elements of learning:
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"Design thinking has helped me see challenges as opportunities to do things differently. In the past, a challenge meant hours of trying to find solutions and investing time, effort, resources. Now, challenges mean opportunities to try new approaches, new ideas, that can be tried and modified as many times as needed." -PIC Principal |
Design ThinkingPIC principals' idea development is rooted in the Design Thinking Process-- a methodology for solving complex problems by drawing on empathy to develop a desirable solution for the end user. Through the design thinking training, PIC principals learn to use logic, imagination, intuition and systemic reasoning to explore more innovative outcomes for their schools.
Principals developed prototypes to implement on their campus. Here are a few examples of their projects:
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Leadership DevelopmentPIC principals receive innovative leadership development training designed to deepen their learning, sharpen their leadership skills and empower them to be transformative leaders on their campus.
The professional learning curriculum is tailored to the life cycle of their action projects and includes topics such as:
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"It definitely has taught me how to Sharpen my Saw, knowing myself, knowing change, copying with change, growing myself and others and empathizing with those I am working with or for. With this growth I feel a balance regardless of the challenge that definitely has me committed to remaining in my role as a principal." -PIC Principal |
“The opportunities to share and collaborate with colleagues are priceless. The time to brainstorm, reflect on, and plan my practice as a leader has helped me grow and be more intentional.” -PIC Principal |
Peer Networking & CollaborationPIC provides principals with the unique opportunity to connect with other like-minded peers and develop a support network of individuals from various districts across North Texas. Through PIC, principals are able to leverage the knowledge of others as they work collaboratively and effectively in a high-functioning, multi-stakeholder teams powered by a common goal of school improvement.
A key goal for PIC is to identify and test innovative and scalable strategies for other campuses to replicate. As leaders in their communities, PIC principals will have the opportunity to share their ‘big idea’ and outcomes with the broader North Texas educational community, and serve as a mentor resource for other local principals interested in replicating a similar idea at their school. |
PIC is a Texas Education Agency approved Continuing Professional Education (CPE) provider.