Institute for Small and Rural Districts and FloridaLearns Foundation Featured Presenter - James Knight Ph.D.

Presentation Topic – Fifteen Questions for Leaders

Few challenges are greater than leading in educational institutes today. Faced with pressures coming from all directions, leaders can feel overwhelmed by all they are asked to do. Fortunately, there are powerful and easy to implement strategies that all leaders can use to have an unmistakably positive impact on students and adults. Participants in this presentation will learn 15 strategies, organized around the themes of Leading Yourself, Leading Others, and Leading Through Communication that they can use right away to increase their positive impact. Anyone who leads in schools, in the community, or in their home, should leave this presentation with more ideas they can implement as leaders and with more hope about the extremely important work they need to do.

Bio Sketch

Dr. James Knight is a senior research associate at KUCRL and director of the Kansas Coaching Project. He has spent close to two decades studying professional learning and instructional coaching. He has served as the principal investigator of grants and contracts totally nearly $30 million all devoted to the study of professional learning and instructional coaching. He has written or co-authored several books on the topic including Instructional Coaching: A Partnership Approach to Improving Instruction published by Corwin and Learning Forward (2007) and Unmistakable Impact: A Partnership Approach for Dramatically Improving Instruction (2011). Knight co-authored Coaching Classroom Management (2006) and also edited Coaching: Approaches and Perspectives (2008). Knight has authored articles on instructional coaching and professional learning in publications such as The Journal of Staff Development, Educational Leadership, Principal Leadership, The School Administrator, and Kappan.

Dr. Knight earned his PhD in Education from the University of Kansas and has won several university teaching, innovation, and service awards. Knight also hosts Talking About Teaching on the Teaching Channel. His current work can be found and followed at: www.radicallearners.com, jimknightoncoaching.squarespace.com, twitter.com/jimknight99.