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Intentional Moves

How Skillful Team Leaders Impact Learning

By: Elisa Beildeck MacDonald

Leading a team means more than running meetings. It’s leading collaborative learning for continuous improvement. In this long-awaited follow-up to her best-selling book, The Skillful Team Leader, acclaimed educator Elisa MacDonald presents nearly 150 effective moves, organized by intention, for any educator who leads a team.

Product Details

Grade Level: PreK-12
ISBN: 9781506392844
Published By: Corwin
Year: 2022
Page Count: 504
Publication date: August 15, 2022

Price: $40.95

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Description

For maximum impact, let intention drive your actions.

Leading a team means more than running meetings. It’s leading collaborative learning for continuous improvement. Like effective teachers in the classroom, skillful team leaders decide what they are aiming to achieve and make small, intentional moves to produce powerful learning outcomes for teachers and students.

In this long-awaited follow-up to her best-selling book, The Skillful Team Leader, acclaimed educator Elisa MacDonald presents nearly 150 effective moves, organized by intention, for any educator who leads a team.

In this book, you'll find strategies to lead with purpose and direction, including how to:

foster an inclusive environment and strengthen team trust
interrupt bias and cultivate diverse perspectives
navigate resistance and manage conflict
facilitate data analysis
lead peer observation
assess your team’s collaboration

and so much more!

Written in a practitioner-friendly format with a light tone and relatable stories, this is a must-have book for all team leaders and those who support them in your school.

Key features

Actionable strategies that promote diversity, equity, and inclusion on teams
Examples and advice from real skillful team leaders
A simple six-phase cycle to guide teams’ collaborative inquiry
Essential understandings about group psychology, adult learning, and peer leadership
A reflection tool to assess a team’s collaboration
Templates, tools, and guiding prompts for skillful team leaders
Pro tips for leading protocols
Short, thought-provoking, relatable reads for a team leader book study

Author(s)

Elisa Beildeck MacDonald

An educator for 30 years, Elisa B. MacDonald is the author of the best-selling book, The Skillful Team Leader: A Resource for Overcoming Hurdles to Professional Learning for Student Achievement. Her broad-ranging experience includes roles such as teacher, literacy coach, and assistant principal of instruction in the Boston Public Schools and adjunct professor for teacher action research at Boston College. As national director at Teach Plus, Elisa built up and led a program in six cities in which teams of teachers in chronically underperforming schools achieved rapid gains for students. Currently, Elisa consults with school districts and organizations, training and coaching team leaders and helping to transform teacher, school, and district-level leadership teams.

When Elisa isn’t championing students and teachers, she is on stage acting, driving her twins to soccer and theater, or experimenting in the kitchen, pretending she’s on the Food Network. Contact Elisa if you want to learn more about skillful intentional team leadership, or if you just want a delicious fudge recipe.

www.elisamacdonald.com
skillfulteamleader@gmail.com
(Twitter) @elisaBmacdonald
(LinkedIn) Elisa B. MacDonald

Table of Contents

Part 1: Foundations

Chapter 1: Skillful and Intentional Leadership

Chapter 2: Don’t Settle for High-Functioning Teams

Chapter 3: The Real Work of Collaborative Inquiry

Part 2: Essential Understandings

Chapter 4: The Psychology of Groups

Chapter 5: Five Must-knows About Adult Learners

Chapter 6: The Upsides (and Downsides) of Being a Peer Leader

Part 3: Ten Primary Intentions with Moves

Primary Intention #1: Optimize Learning Conditions: Time, Space and Accommodations

Primary Intention #2: Establish Expectations and Responsibilities: Norms and Roles

Primary Intention #3: Nurture Group Culture: Community and Trust

Primary Intention #4: Design and Plan Learning: Work Plans, Agendas and Protocols

Primary Intention #5: Engage and Interact: Participation, Conflict-Resolution and Decision-Making.

Primary Intention #6: Set Purpose and Direction: Priorities, Inquiry Questions and Goals.

Primary Intention #7: Use Data to Advance Learning: Assessments and Data Talk

Primary Intention #8: Cultivate Diverse Perspectives in Problem Solving: Assumptions and Bias

Primary Intention #9: Implement New Learning: Peer Observations, Resistance and Change.

Primary Intention #10: Assess: Feedback, Reflection and Growth for Teams and Leaders.

Reviews

"It’s refreshing to read a book that discusses high functioning teams within the context of moving the needle on student learning. No longer do we have the luxury of defining success based on whether teams follow norms, stay on task, and get work done. Rather, this book frames how we can be intentional about impacting student learning, teacher practice, and school culture and climate through skillful team collaboration. "

Diane Sweeney, Founder and Lead Consultant
Diane Sweeney Consulting

"The beauty of this book rests in its authenticity. MacDonald draws from research and extensive experience to identify 10 essential goals for skillful team leaders and specifies explicit moves and targeted strategies for realization of each. The result is an engaging, user-friendly, encyclopedia of wisdom and hands-on practices. All team leaders who desire to produce results that matter will treasure this book."

Jackie Walsh, Author and Independent Consultant
Walsh Consulting

"This comprehensive book is rich with strategies for district, school and teacher teams ready to make decisions and improvements that will positively affect students' success. Whether you are new to leading teams or a veteran, this is sure to be your go-to resource to take on the challenging work of leading collaborative learning. The stories and examples are universally relatable and the color coded sections make it a very accessible read. This book is sure to leave you feeling empowered and recharged with hope and possibility."

Dr. Debbie Zacarian, Consultant and Author
Zacarian and Associates