Ongoing leadership experiences provide our Masters and C.A.S. candidates with opportunities to integrate the knowledge acquired through study and previous leadership and professional experience with guided practice supported by practitioner partners and faculty.

Full-time candidates are paired with school leaders in our partnership district and schools. Our partners are certified educational leaders in New York City regions and schools with widely diverse students and communities and the opportunities and challenges characteristic of urban settings.

Part-time candidates are full-time teachers in NYC schools or in surrounding metropolitan areas. Our full-time and part-time candidates have numerous and continuous opportunities for leadership experiences in a variety of school and community contexts with students who have an extensive array of talents, needs, school experiences, and individual circumstances.

The ongoing and the culminating leadership experiences are planned collaboratively by program faculty, partners, and candidates to ensure guided study and practice in areas relevant to the content requirements, purposes, and values of the program. The ongoing leadership experiences are incorporated into course requirements and are included in the required leadership portfolio in which the written reflections and products accumulated throughout the program are brought together and reviewed during the course of the internship experience. Candidates are responsible for assembling case materials to document their experiences and their analyses. Certified educational leaders and program faculty provide supervision, support, and mentoring for candidates.

Activities include experiences designed to foster leadership for school improvement, leadership in support of teaching and learning, leadership in support of collaboration and community engagements, and enacting a leadership career.

The culminating leadership experience is also planned collaboratively by program faculty, partners, and candidates. The candidate’s program of study, prior professional and leadership opportunities, and leadership portfolio are reviewed to plan a comprehensive, individualized, culminating leadership experience. A plan is developed that is relevant to the candidate’s knowledge and expertise in the areas of practice and study reflected in the content requirements for educational leadership programs and for certification as a school building leader. Full-time candidates complete a semester-long (15 week) full-time internship with program partners. Part-time candidates complete a part-time internship throughout the academic year (approximately 30 weeks) with the administrators of the schools in which they teach. In both cases, individual candidates will work directly with a certified school leader and a program faculty member, assuming increasingly complex leadership responsibilities that are organized according to content requirements and program purposes. The culminating leadership experience for part-time candidates will occur throughout their final year in the program.