Curriculum Based in Support, Experience & Research

The Cahn Fellows Core and Responsive curricula are designed to build leadership skills with instruction in Adult Development, Action Inquiry and current educational topics. Each Fellow is assigned an Alumni and Faculty Advisor team who act as mentors and coaches through the research, report writing and project delivery phases. Networking opportunities with principals and Alumni Advisors across the country create a cycle of career-long support.

Cahn Fellows enjoy an approach with:

Our Professional Development Learning Cycle

We are living, teaching, learning, and leading in the context of life-changing challenges in our schools.  Today—perhaps more than ever before—we need to support school leaders so that they can sustain themselves and adapt their supports and challenges to build internal capacity at the individual, school and systems levels.

The Adult Development thread of our program provides ongoing opportunities for leaders to reflect on their practices individually, in small cohort groups, in smaller site-based teams and in the cohort as a whole. The program includes a central focus on adult development and its connection to building leaders’ internal capacities since these are directly related to how leaders support others.  Investing in supporting adult learning not only builds capacity, but it is directly tied to increasing student achievement. In this thread, we seek to help leaders become more aware of their own cognitive, emotional and interpersonal development. The goal is to help our participants grow capacity, learn new skills and implement practices for supporting others in their development. This thread helps to increase the effectiveness of teams and mentoring programs, and build healthy cultures that are compassionate, growth-oriented and ones where adults and children are not just surviving—but instead thriving.

Knowledge

Fellows and Allies begin their leadership journey at our Annual Leadership Conference where they learn from presentations delivered by our outgoing cohorts. Following that introduction, they participate in Study Summits engaging in both informational and transformational learning. Fellows and Allies from across the country convene during these 2–3-day summits where they dive deeply into their learning with Teachers College faculty and distinguished guest speakers. It is during these summits that they also connect with their peers and work with our volunteer Alumni Advisors using the action inquiry cycle to research and develop a plan to address a school-based problem of practice. During the year, Fellows are also offered the opportunity to visit Gettsyburg where they learn how different leadership styles impact change. At the end of this yearlong program Fellows and Allies present their research at our Annual Leadership Conference.

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Action Research

The Action Research component of the curriculum is designed to teach the skills necessary to promote the on-going process of transformational learning so that our leaders develop the skills necessary to understand and respond to the challenges they face and enable them to perform in effective, sustainable ways. Leaders in this program begin to use the action research framework in their practice to focus on problems that are of immediate concern. They are taught the cyclical process of planning, observing, acting and reflecting.

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Experiential Learning

Fellows and Allies experience leadership challenges in the classroom and in the field. A visit to Gettysburg, for example, provides opportunities for our Fellows and Allies to experience leadership from the lens of communication, empowerment and the impact of decision-making in a crisis.

Another important target we’ve identified is the creation of programming for our alumni who continue to be adult learners and have a desire to network with their peers.

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