Testimonials

The APEX Program for School Leadership offers learners a unique opportunity to apply the wisdom of a chorus of ancient voices to the modern-day challenge of running a school. Read the first-hand experience of our alumni below.

Program Testimonials

“Every class that I’ve taken since has just given me great opportunities to meet with colleagues, read about really helpful things, and also bounce ideas off of others. The reading list for every APEX class that I’ve taken has been so good that I send it to my friends at other schools and say, “This is what I get to do for my professional development!” But the most invaluable part was really just conversation with other people in the class and with the course facilitators, and the synchronous portions of the classes, those zoom sessions, even the smaller ones of four or five people, there’s just so much experience and so many ideas all united around this classical education project we’re engaged in.”

“The APEX Program for School Leadership has been very instrumental in helping me develop as a classical school administrator. The courses I took gave me a strong foundation in building a healthy school culture and leading a team and inspired me to think about faculty expectations and about how to balance the parallax between strategic goals and management tactics. In the case studies, I was exposed to the most common challenges facing school communities and came to understand the necessity of virtues and good judgment to counteract these challenges. Additionally, APEX challenged me to develop behaviors that generate trust in order to build strong relationships. Hiring for Mission Fit in particular was a huge help. The two books we read for this course really helped me understand how to hire the right people. Every school leader, no matter how long he or she has been working in school administration, will gain valuable insight from taking these courses. Thank you, Great Hearts, for providing this exceptional training.”

Course Testimonials

Instructional Coaching Principles & Practices

“I’ve really enjoyed the course on coaching. It is long. It takes about a semester, but you get your time’s worth. There are multiple books that you investigate with your cohort, and many case studies that you talk about together and even bring it into your day-to-day practice and receive coaching on those experiences. I’ve really enjoyed my time with it and know that I’ll be going back to those readings after the course is over. Just reflect on my own coaching experience and what I can do going forward.”

“This APEX course was our primary professional development for our master teachers for this current year. Through this course it was just very helpful in helping to understand how to have coaching conversations. We covered the theories of coaching, how to actually say certain things and certain phrases, how to redirect conversations and mainly how to meet teachers where they’re at, just assessing where their needs are and getting to the root of what the causes of certain things were. I would say the practical coaching techniques were probably the most valuable component of this course. “

“What I loved most about this course is that there’s two parts to it. The first part focuses mainly on reading all of these rich resources that are out there about coaching cycles, observation, feedback, looking at teacher rubrics, reading some things that are philosophical but also pedagogical, and really practical. And you’re coming together with other instructional coaches and other members of different school leaderships all across the country to talk about how we can best serve our teachers in these coaching meetings. So that’s the first part. The second part of the APEX course for instructional coaching that I think was incredibly impactful to me as a school leader was the fact that there was an 8 week mentorship program. Oftentimes, as teachers, we forget about how important it is to practice our craft and that that’s the same thing for leaders. And so what this mentorship allowed you to do was to practice in live time with this mentorship targeting specific areas for your campus and with the teachers that you were directly working with and you’re set up with mentors in the field, leaders in the field, of classical education that have a lot of experience. And just as a Socrates learned from Plato and was then able to go and teach Aristotle, you also are able to just share the things that you’re struggling with on your campus, the ways that you want to personally grow and develop in your own field or your own professional development and get live coaching regarding you just continuing on in that field with whatever it is that you personally might be looking at as an administrator as a member of a school leadership to change or areas on your campus that you want to specifically target to better help your students and your teachers.”

Hiring for Mission Fit

“The Hiring for Mission Fit course gave me a lot of skills that helped me in coaching teachers that were already part of the school, and then now as I am doing a lot more with hiring in my role as assistant headmaster, I find myself going back to the books, to the hiring plan that we developed for the class, and it’s been really invaluable.”

Building a Strong Student Culture

“One of the courses I took was on student culture. Now this student culture course just reminded me that I was not alone. Education can sometimes be an arduous task, especially when it involves the education of a forming virtue, and your scholars and having a chance to come together with a variety of different teachers and school leaders across the country that are all working in these different great hearts campuses. It was an incredible blessing, using Nicomachean Ethics and Aristotle as that springboard for creativity regarding how you could craft and cultivate virtue on your campus. It was not only refreshing, but it was inspiring and I walked away from that course with a lot of practical pedagogical strategies that I was unable to implement in my own time as a lower school Dean. “

Building a Strong Faculty Culture

“Building a Strong Faculty Culture helped me reflect as a sort of new school leader…on what makes a productive and positive workspace versus what might make it a detrimental place to work. I really appreciated that one of the things we read in that class was Plutarch on Candor…Plutarch said it best when he talked about flattery and candor in friendship. So there’s no point in reinventing the wheel, and that’s in particular what has stuck out to me. We even did it with our whole faculty during all faculty training one year.”

Personal Leadership I

“I think my favorite class that I have taken…was Personal Leadership I, with Doctor Dyer at Great Hearts, Irving. In this class we read some classical plays. The one that sticks out the most to me is Oedipus Rex, and we read some reflections on that. This class, I think more than any other, has sort of reframed the way that I read these great texts. I’m reading The Inferno right now and as I read The Inferno, I’m still reading the literature, but this class has helped me glean sort of personally applicable leadership lessons from these texts and that’s really helpful. The seminar in the Personal Leadership I class is unparalleled. I can’t think of hardly any other classes or seminars that I’ve been part of that I’ve enjoyed as much.”

Building Healthy Parent Communities

“Another class that I really enjoyed with Building Healthy Parent Communities. I don’t think I it’s possible to overstate how important the parents are in the education of their children. Parents of the primary educators, the first educators to the last educators I know, the most important educators of their children.
So having a healthy parent community, a good relationship between school and family is not just important, but essential. We can’t do our work well, but we don’t have that. One of the books for this class that I really enjoyed and is another one that I keep coming back to, was Dealing with Difficult Parents by Todd Whitacre. I think the only thing I didn’t like about the book was how short it was. He gave a lot of really good tips for dealing with parents who are frustrated and or, you know, upset about one thing or another. And I appreciated that in this class, it continually came back to being reminded that parents are looking out for their kids and when they do things that we find difficult. Even when they speak harshly it’s almost always coming from a place of wanting to pull it out for their child, and that’s a reminder that I think I benefit from.”