All educators and leaders are unique, and so are their needs and areas for growth.
As an experienced school and district leader, Matt will partner with you, your school, or your business to design a coaching or consulting program to fit your specific needs. He has been fortunate to work with districts and events in many capacities, from long-term coaching and consulting to presentations and keynotes,
He is driven to support your district, school, or organization turn potential into power. Below are examples of my services and programs, but it is certainly not limited to these options. Feel free to contact Matt with questions.
Stronger Together: Collaborative Communities
Having a stronger together mindset is a simple yet profound message, and we should all join the conversation. Ride the bus with students, visit a classroom, read books to classrooms, set up coffee hours, and more. It’s time to make it happen for your community!
This session will focus on developing a shared understanding of the critical role teams serve in improving student performance in schools. Participants will use the knowledge gained in their current professional experience to explore current practices and learn new skills to enhance contributions to team effectiveness. Additionally, participants will learn the impact effective teams can play in influencing student achievement. We will focus on:
- Collabrative Communiteies
- Collaborative Leadership
- Power of Connections
- Maximizing learning walks and classroom visits
- Student teamwork and collaboration
Leadership Coaching
Matt has experience coaching experienced leaders, new leaders, or aspiring leaders to maximize performance and increase their leadership skills. Matt will use his 15 years as a building and district leader to provide actionable guidance, advice, and support regularly transforms the leader's performance. These 5 components will be at the heart of the work.
- Empowerment: Matt will empower leaders to do their best work. He will become familiar with their strengths and weaknesses and help them leverage their strengths to overcome obstacles to their goals. Supportive and reflective sessions with Matt on progress toward goals are meant to be motivating and thus empowering.
- New insight: Matt's 21-century leadership experience will bring new insight into various problems a leader might be facing with digital leadership.
- Free thinking: Matt will work with leaders to broaden their thinking styles and encourage greater flexibility in thinking by asking questions that prompt the leader to see other perspectives on an issue. Flexible or free-thinking is increasingly important for school leaders, given today's rapid changes in technology, social media/messaging, and consumer trends.
- Enhanced performance: Matt will work with individuals or teams to target a leader's growth area to produce significant improvements in both attitude and ability.
- Improved communication: Matt will assist leaders in developing maximum clarity in their messaging.
Innovative Leadership: Using a startup mindset in K-12
I hear too often, “I am not a techie.” Yet, so many educators say they aren’t tech-savvy, and fear is at the heart of it all. Matt will work with your team to create a mindset of innovation and failure and start clicking those links to amplify your inner confidence with tech already inside of you! Learn how to be a ‘mobile’ leader. Improve connections, relationships, share the story of your school and spend less than an hour in your office each day!
An innovative leader should try to create new ideas, but it is more important to develop a culture of innovation. Explore methods to empower your teachers with a shared vision and a safe and supportive environment of risk-taking, trust, and swift implementation.
Innovative leaders not only “think” differently, but they “act” differently. Now is the time to act and put these innovative characteristics into action. This session will empower YOU to build a culture of innovation. We will focus on:
- Digital Leadership
- Strategies For Virtual PD
- Moving From Consumption To Creation
- Strategies For EdTech Coaching
Reimagining Mentorship in Education
What does it mean to be a “mentor”? Mr. Webster may define it as “an experienced and trusted adviser,” are you convinced his definition has been actualized in the field of education. Many mentors are, by definition, “experienced,” it does not necessarily mean they are experienced in the realm of mentoring. Frequently mentors have been experienced teachers or administrators but have never received the training and insight necessary to support emerging educators or leaders. Similarly, “trusted advisors” don’t appear out of thin air when they are placed on the mentor list. We will focus on:
- Having a menu of strategies to ensure mentors are trained and have the essential skills to support another educator.
- Ways to develop mentoring programs designed to assist teachers in becoming strong mentors and to assist new teachers or school/district leaders in getting the most out of their mentoring relationship.
- Training mentors to be impactful
- Evaluation of the mentor program
- Ideas to enfuse peer mentoring
- Process for mentoring asiring leaders
Mentoring is not the process of checking a box; it is the process of developing colleagues or leaders who eventually work alongside us.
More Sessions
Additional Information
Moving From Consumption to Creation
We often talk about engagement and students having an active role in learning. However, if you look at the classroom of the 50s, you would see desks in rows, a teacher in the front of the room doing most of the talking, books out on the desks, and students consuming the lesson. Should schools in 2017 follow this same model? The answer should be a resounding, very loud NO, but that is not always the case. In today’s classroom, do we teach by telling information that students are expected to consume? One of the keys to academic achievement is active learning. Personalized, collaborative, and connected learning experiences enhance student engagement, which in turn drives student success. By integrating blended and digital learning into the classroom, educators can take learning experiences to the next level and improve student performance. Apps don’t teach, TEACHERS teach. Technology does not replace educators. Digital learning is an instructional strategy that enhancing and engages learners. It’s important to know what tools we have and what they’re capable of providing to enhance student learning. This session will focus on tools and strategies to create active thinkers and learners.
Strong Teams Make Progress Happen: Skills for Effective Collaboration
Adult Team Building
This session will focus on developing a shared understanding of the critical role teams serve in improving student performance in schools. Participants will use the knowledge gained in their current professional experience to explore current practices and learn new skills to enhance contributions to team effectiveness. Additionally, participants will learn the impact effective teams can play in influencing student achievement.
The session will examine principles of building highly effective teams by analyzing the variety of interrelated practices underlying group dynamics. Participants will engage in learning through hands-on situations and contemporaneous experiences in a team-based exercise. This course addresses how teams behave, when to use a team, how to compose a team, and how to measure team performance.
Student Team Building
During this exercise, students will work first on their own and then in their school teams to arrive at a solution to a challenge presented to them. The challenge will be highly unfamiliar and involve high levels of uncertainty. Students will need to navigate through the challenge within a specified time period and with no external facilitation. The exercise has been used in prior settings with people of all ages and roles, including superintendents, executives, and high school students.
The goals of this activity are to provide students with a hands-on learning experience that emphasizes the value of teamwork over individual-level contributions. It is a fun exercise that allows for thoughtful reflection at both the team and individual levels. During the debrief, we will discuss the opportunities and tripwires of working in teams, particularly under conditions of high uncertainty and complexity, and will share lessons learned.
Collabortive Leadership
A collaborative leadership culture is more than merely leading a scheduled meeting, sharing ideas, or sitting through meetings taking notes. Collaborative leadership requires transparency, honesty, integrity, dependability, accountability, and educators’ commitment to shared goals. A community that supports collaborative leadership must be fostered and supported by the administration for lasting success.
Ed Tech Coaching in Today’s Classrooms
Too often, schools launch new technology without a plan for supporting and coaching teachers through the process of using new technology effectively in their classrooms. One key to launching and supporting the marriage of ed tech and curriculum is increasing the opportunity to support teachers and help them raise student achievement. Today’s students’ needs vary as they are growing up in the digital learning age. Knowing how to integrate existing tech with today’s instructional best practices and strategies engage students to maximize learning. Supporting educators on this journey is a critical step. This workshop focuses on creating an edtech professional development roadmap for success.
