A Sneak Peek Into the 2023 NIET Summer Institute

Summer is a time to reflect and prepare for the new school year. Each year, the NIET Summer Institute offers educators dedicated time and space to collaborate with their team while receiving support from NIET. On June 22-23, teacher, school and district leaders will join NIET at our Summer Institute in New Orleans as we work to elevate educators to support student success in the coming school year. 

NIET’s Summer Institute kicks off with a deep dive session that is followed by hands-on, interactive breakout sessions in which educators will collaborate and learn with NIET specialists and their school team. School and district teams will have dedicated time to plan for the 2023-24 school year. The breakout sessions of the  Summer Institute will focus on three key areas, including: Unleashing Teacher Leadership, Robust Instructional Practices, and Creating Positive Environments. Here’s a sneak peek of what to expect. 

Using Student Work as the Catalyst for Instructional Leadership Team Actions

To jumpstart participants’ thinking, our first session at NSI will be a deep dive session into the topic of transformational leadership. The session, “From Compliance to Impact: Using Student Work as the Catalyst for Instructional Leadership Team Actions” will analyze how the Instructional Leadership Team plays a role in monitoring and supporting the teaching and learning process in part by using frequent measures of student performance. This session will explore how Instructional Leadership Team actions move from a focus on compliance to a focus on impact. 

In addition to learning on how to use student work to drive more effective instructional support, we will also focus on three areas our partners have highlighted as critically important right now. 

Differentiating Support for Teachers During Weekly Professional Learning Teams 

It is more critical than ever to differentiate the support provided to teachers during and after weekly professional learning team or “cluster” meetings. This session highlights the process of using both qualitative and quantitative data to drive decisions made for the intentional development and application of team learning. 

Differentiating Instructional Content and Strategies to Support Individual Learners

Providing differentiated instructional content and strategies to ensure students have the opportunity to master what is being taught is critical when responding to student data. In this session, school leadership teams will learn how to support teachers in determining high-impact opportunities to propel student learning forward. 

Supporting Teachers to Help Students Understand and Own Their Data

In this session, participants will examine the role of the teacher in creating a classroom culture that promotes student ownership of data and learn how to recognize where teachers are on a continuum of change. Participants will use existing school support structures to develop next steps to support teachers in shifting the classroom culture toward student understanding and ownership of their own learning data. 

Planning and Application: Transferring Learning to Classrooms and Students 

This concluding session is a culminating learning experience where teams will debrief their collective learnings from the two days. Together, school leadership teams will develop plans to apply their new learnings and put in place actions to support a successful 2023-24 school year.

Specifically, participants will:

• Debrief shared learnings from NSI.
• Review available data sources to identify school-level strengths and refinement areas.
• Come to a consensus as an instructional leadership team on essential priorities for the 2023-24 school year.

NIET's National Summer Institute will also include a general session where all participants can come together and connect, as well as hear from NIET Chief Executive Officer Dr. Joshua Barnett and other leaders. We look forward to seeing more than 600 educators in New Orleans, Louisiana on June 22-23. Look for takeaways on social media using the hashtag #NSI2023.