Upcoming Events

Fierce Conversations 11/2/23-11/3/23

Fierce Conversations is an instructor facilitated workshop that provides practical tools and techniques for handling all types of conversations, whether it is running team meetings, coaching, giving feedback or confronting tough conversations.

Register here

10/24/23 Folio Member Webinar: Key Principles for Impactful Professional Growth

On October 24th from 12-1 et Executive Director, Meredith Ford will share Folio’s key principles for supporting teacher growth. We believe that having a personalized approach to professional growth that maps to your school’s educational philosophy and strategic goals leads to the greatest impact for teachers. You’ll walk away with a checklist for mapping professional growth to the key principles. 

10/21/23: USA Festival of Education 

On October 21st, Meredith will be speaking at the inaugural USA Festival of Education at Folio member school, St. Andrew’s Episcopal School. We are thrilled to extend an offer for discounted tickets to all of our Folio member schools. Please reach out to us at members@foliocollaborative.org for registration information. We hope to see you there!

SY 2023-2024 Masterminds: beginning 10/10/23

New myFolio Admin led by Anna Feiss, School Success Operations Manager
4PM EST: 10/11, 11/8, 1/10, 2/14, 3/13, 4/10

Cultivating a Culture of Professional Growth and Celebration  by Carey Fetting-Smith, Director of School Success
12PM EST: 10/11, 11/9, 1/10, 2/14, 3/20, 4/10

Summer Leadership Series: June 26-August 4

Join us from June 26th – August 4th for interactive workshops, admin bootcamps, and Fierce Conversations training.

View the detailed schedule here

myFolio Admin Bootcamp

Dates/Times:  Various dates/times. see registration page.

This course is for new myFolio Admins or those restarting their use of Folio and in need of a refresher. Participants will complete asynchronous coursework and attend a live group coaching call with a small cohort of other myFolio Admins and the Folio School Success team.

Expectations:

  • Asynchronous coursework will be completed at least 24 hours prior to the group coaching call.
  • The group coaching call will require active participation via video.

Outcomes:

MyFolio Admin….

  • is clear on how to use and set up the platform
  • has (started) plan for how Folio will be used to make professional learning priority in the upcoming year
  • is connected to other Admins in the Collaborative

Register Here

Past Events

Webinar: Planning for the End of the Year (Members only)

Dates/Times: 

Option 1:  5/4/23 10am est. Register here. 

Option 2: 5/5/23 12pm est. Register here. 

Cost: Free

meeting dates.

Register Here

Folio Masterminds (Members only)

Dates/Times:  Various dates/times starting in September through Spring of 2023, see registration page

One of our most popular offerings, the Folio Mastermind series brings together groups of school leaders from Folio member schools around the shared goal of deepening growth-minded faculty cultures within their school communities. Meeting for monthly calls, Mastermind groups offer leaders space to pause and clarify ideas, seek wisdom from others, hone leadership skills, and maximize their use of the myFolio platform. Groups meet for six 60-minute calls over the course of the year to share challenges and brainstorm solutions together.

As space is limited and demand is high, we ask that you register for a Mastermind group for which you are able to attend at least six of the seven meeting dates. Once registered, you will receive confirmation calendar invites for each of your Mastermind group’s

Save the dates: July 11th through the 13th, 2022!

The Folio Summer Institute will be returning to Lansdowne Resort, Lansdowne, VA for #FolioSI2022!

More information here.

Registration is now open, and the group discount is still available!

What: Folio Collaborative Meetups are monthly one hour community gatherings. Join us for one or all as we create space to step back and think together about key questions on members’ minds. To accommodate folks in different time zones, we offer separate sessions, one at 12 to 1 ET (9 to 10 PT) and a separate session at 12 to 1 PT (3 to 4 ET):

2022

  • January 20: What does it look like to keep growth front and center as a leadership team in order to develop the habit of reflecting and adapting?
  • February 10: How do we envision the community we want to be next year that centers on learning for all–students and adults?
  • March 10: What does finishing strong look like in your school, division, or department? How do we hold and lead our community with both pressure and support to keep the momentum in the final stretch?
  • April 21: TBD by member demand

Why: Conversations are core and a signature tool of impactful leaders. Conversations inspire and shift hearts and minds one after another. Meetups are designed to prepare you to lead conversations that matter at your school.

How: At Folio Collaborative, we believe in collaborative problem solving because groups change the world. We also believe reflection is not a luxury but essential to learning and leading effectively. Come to a Meetup where we will reflect, think together, and leave ready for action.

12 to 1 ET (9 to 10 PT)

Register here

12 to 1 PT (3 to 4 ET)

Register here

6 calls, October 2021 through April 2022.

One of our most popular offerings, the Folio Mastermind series brings together groups of highly motivated school leaders from Folio member schools around the shared goal of deepening growth-minded faculty cultures within their school communities. Each group is led by an experienced facilitator and meets for seven 60-minute calls over the course of the year to share challenges and brainstorm solutions together.

This year’s Mastermind groups will be organized around the key reasons you hired Folio as well as additional topics of interest to member schools. 

 Each group will meet for six 60-minute video calls over the course of the year. As space is limited and demand is high, we ask that you register for a Mastermind group for which you are able to attend at least six of the seven meeting dates. Once registered, you will receive confirmation calendar invites for each of your Mastermind group’s meeting dates.

Tuition is $250 (Folio members only.) Register here.

Friday, March 4, 3:00 PM-4:00 PM ET (Block 6)

Come to our live general workshop! For the past several years, with support from the McDonogh School and the E.E. Ford Foundation, a design team of Folio member school educators investigated how to foster collaboration, conducting fact-finding visits to a set of highly collaborative schools, nonprofits, and for-profit companies. Synthesis of this research yielded a framework and white paper to help schools become more collaborative workplaces. Engage with strategies and activities to explore how you might apply our findings at your school.

Meredith Ford, Folio Collaborative; Garet Libby, Hawken School (OH); Kevin Costa, McDonogh School (MD); Derek Krein, Tabor Academy (MA); Jennifer D. Gladden, Polytechnic School (CA)

Tuesday, March 1st, Noon to 1 PM ET

$49 Members, $99 Non Members

What is a Town Hall?
Join our Folio Town Hall, a forum where members can connect and learn from experts about how to navigate and lead in our ever-changing educational landscape. Come gather practical ideas and resources and deepen your connection with fellow school leaders.

What is the topic?
Practical ways to support the mental health and well-being of your students and colleagues throughout the pandemic and beyond.
Dr. Parker Huston will provide background theories, data and practical strategies to help you support the well-being of your students and colleagues. From a foundation of positive psychology, we will learn about specific challenges during times of frequent change and inconsistency and warning signs to watch for that may require intervention. Members will also learn the importance of promoting mental health and well-being across the lifespan and discuss practical ways to integrate this into your schools.

Register here.

Collaboration among faculty and staff is a key driver for increasing teacher growth and the overall quality of teaching and learning in our schools, and yet deeply collaborative adult cultures are rarer than we would like in independent schools.

For the past several years, with support from the McDonogh School and the E.E. Ford Foundation, a design team led by the Folio Collaborative has investigated how to help schools foster faculty collaboration, conducting fact-finding visits to a set of highly-collaborative schools, non-profits, and for-profit companies.

Synthesis of this research yielded a school leadership framework and accompanying whitepaper — The Building Blocks of Transformational Teamwork — which provides guidance to help schools become more collaborative workplaces.

This course will guide participants as they learn about key elements of collaborative cultures, assess the strengths and growth areas of their own school cultures when it comes to collaboration, and acquire a set of strategies and tactics they can use to improve adult collaboration in their schools.

Competencies:

  • Take a deep dive into the Building Blocks of Transformational Teamwork framework for fostering adult collaboration in schools, building a vocabulary and set of leadership tactics around adult collaboration
  • Reflect upon their school’s strengths and weaknesses in terms of the collaboration framework and identify critical areas for improvement
  • Explore tactics for improving adult collaboration in their schools’ identified areas of need, and create a plan for next steps

$355 for Folio Collaborative / One Schoolhouse Consortium members; $495 for all other participants. Learn more and register here.

We often hear from department chairs that they don’t feel equipped to have the new kinds of conversations they are asked to have, or that they feel they need to have, in order to drive change in their departments. They may see themselves as colleagues and managers of department business, more so than coaches, team leaders, and developers of faculty.

Often, they have moved into their roles without the formal leadership training required to transform the work of their departments and the instruction occurring in classrooms.

This three-day workshop is designed to equip department chairs with immediately-applicable communication tools and leadership skills that can help them enhance collaboration, foster and support teacher growth, and strengthen collegial relationships within their department.

Taking Fierce Conversations modules as well as strategies from our research around collaborative working environments, department chairs will practice skills, experience activities firsthand, and transfer their learning to the myFolio process that they will use in the coming year.

Details and registration here

It would be an understatement to say that the events of 2020 have complicated the practice of classroom observation. In trying time and unfamiliar classroom contexts,  skills and competencies for observing teaching and offering meaningful feedback are evolving.

This course will guide participants in developing practices that work in multiple modes (on-campus, hybrid, and online) and for complex situations, ultimately helping participants plan for a more mission- and values-aligned approach to observation.

Details and registration here

Discount for Folio members
Through the new Folio Speaker Series, Collaborative members will better understand and explore how to bring an equity-and-inclusion lens to their work supporting faculty and staff. These monthly workshops feature guest speakers, innovative content, and time for members to engage with and learn from each other. We are pleased to be partnering with The Glasgow Group, a consortium of experts in the field, to feature topics of equity and inclusion in four of our Folio Speaker Series events.

May Workshop: Equity and Inclusion Focus
Topic: DEI + Professional Growth Case Studies
Wednesday, May 5
:  3:00 PM – 4:30 ET / 12:00 PM – 1:30 PT

In previous workshops this year, Folio and the Glasgow Group have helped participants explore a set of big ideas: how to align DEI goal-setting from strategic vision all the way down to individual practice; how to observe, coach, and supervise with equity; and how to recruit and retain a diverse faculty and staff.

In most schools, all of those pieces are at play simultaneously, with professional growth nuanced by each individual’s context as well as the school’s culture, norms, and systems. In this workshop, we’ll integrate all of those ideas and more as we work together through a set of case studies focused upon the intersections between professional growth and DEI work.

Come prepared to engage with case studies shared by the presenters, as well as sharing your own case studies for the group to consider or engaging with case studies shared by other participants. Participants will leave the session with a more nuanced understanding of how the “rubber meets the road” when it comes to bringing a DEI lens to professional growth leadership.

Details and registration here

April Workshop: Creating a Culture of Collaboration
Monday, April 14
:  3:00 PM – 4:30 ET / 12:00 PM – 1:30 PT

Collaboration among faculty and staff is a key driver for increasing teacher growth and the overall quality of teaching and learning in our schools. For the past several years, with support from the McDonogh School and the E.E. Ford Foundation, a design team led by the Folio Collaborative has investigated how to help schools foster faculty collaboration, conducting fact-finding visits to a set of highly-collaborative schools, non-profits, and for-profit companies. Synthesis of this research yielded a school leadership framework and accompanying whitepaper — The Building Blocks of Transformational Teamwork — which provides guidance to help schools become more collaborative workplaces. Join us in this workshop as we share strategies and tactics to make your school a more collaborative place and help you explore how you might apply our findings in your specific context.Guiding Questions:

  • What practices distinguish highly collaborative organizations?
  • If we believe that collaboration enhances learning among students, how can we help teachers learn in more collaborative ways as well?
  • What strategies and tactics are most central to creating a culture of collaboration?

Details and registration here

2021 Annual Meeting, Thursday March 25th, Noon ET

Folio member schools are just that – members. By joining the Collaborative, you aren’t simply subscribing to a software platform or accessing a list of professional development opportunities.

Membership means that you have a voice, that you play a role in Folio’s growth, development, and strategic direction. While there are many ways to exercise that voice and to explore your role as a Folio “insider,” one of the most important of these is Folio’s Annual Meeting, held this year virtually on March 25.
Details and registration here.

February Workshop: Equity and Inclusion Focus
Recruitment and Retention of a Diverse Faculty and Staff
Wednesday, February 10:  
3:00 PM – 4:30 ET / 12:00 PM – 1:30 PT

Recruitment and retention of a diverse faculty/staff are long-standing issues within independent schools. The two concepts exist in a feedback loop: the best way to recruit a diverse faculty is to retain a diverse faculty so that you have critical mass, while the best way to retain a diverse faculty is to have consistent diversity in recruitment to enhance and maintain critical mass. As such, recruitment and retention require attention to an array of cultural and interpersonal factors as well as the design and maintenance of systems to promote trust, equity, safety, and inclusion for employees and prospective hires alike.

Central to these efforts is a school’s approach to professional growth: the ways in which growth, feedback, and professional development are designed and implemented by leaders, and experienced by faculty and staff, have an significant impact on recruitment and retention, especially for members of marginalized groups. Join Folio and a group of diversity practitioners from The Glasgow Group, who will share tools and techniques that have proven to be effective in independent school recruitment. Participants will leave this workshop with concrete steps to take in reviewing and enhancing their recruitment and retention practices.

Guiding Questions:

  • What are the best tactics for recruitment of a diverse faculty/staff?
  • What strategies might schools use to support the retention of diverse faculty/staff?
  • What role do professional growth, feedback, and professional development play in the recruitment and retention of diverse faculty/staff?

Details and registration here

December Workshop: Equity and Inclusion Focus
Topic Observing, Coaching, and Supervising for Equity
Monday, December 7:  3:00 PM – 4:30 ET / 12:00 PM – 1:30 PT


When it comes to classroom observation, teacher coaching, and the working relationships between teachers and their supervisors, identities are a major factor and “the way we’ve always done it” doesn’t necessarily work for everyone, especially members of marginalized groups.

 

Supporting growth for all members of our professional communities, and maximizing teacher retention in a time of great complexity and challenge, requires us to unpack and examine the intersections between race, gender, sexual identity, and other key aspects of identity.

 

We know the importance of quality feedback and that a positive mentoring relationship is a key factor in the retention and success of employees from underrepresented communities.

 

The professional development process we use in schools — to help faculty and staff learn and grow, work through challenges, rise to meet expectations, and develop their craft as educators — must have a lens towards diversity, equity, and inclusion. Join us to build your skills and rethink your systems towards a more equitable approach to observing classrooms, coaching faculty and staff members, and serving as a supervisor.

 

Guiding Questions:

  • How can we approach classroom observation differently in order to make it more supportive to BIPOC faculty and staff and members of other groups who have historically been underrepresented and marginalized in independent schools? 

  • How can supervisors and coaches connect meaningfully with teachers across cultural differences, building effective relationships that don’t replicate systems of oppression? 

  • How can those with dominant identities effectively share critical feedback with those of marginalized identities so that feedback is heard without feeling like it is contributing to negative experiences or targeting? 

  • How can we connect authentically and support effectively when we don’t fully understand the challenges someone faces because of their identity?


Details and registration here

Schedule a Demo

Thank you for your interest in Folio. We’d love to show you how Folio can help you promote growth and professional development in your school.