So many thoughtful leadership moves are packed within conversation #63 with Kirk Koennecke, Superintendent of Indian Hill Exempted Village School District in Ohio.

"I’ve learned that high expectations come with incredible responsibility. Our community demands transparency in how we invest in professional learning, which has pushed us to be more intentional about everything we do. Most importantly, we've learned that it’s easy to say we have a learner-centered vision, but you must have students and the community in the room to actually pull this off. We’ve held ongoing listening sessions, building tours, 'Coffee with Kirk', book studies, and community partnerships to ensure our professional learning priorities align with what the community we serve values most.

This mindset led to our district deciding, three years ago, to prioritize Building Thinking Classrooms, Project-Based Learning (PBL), and Leadership Development. Each high-yield strategy requires very specific skillsets, and we quickly realized that effective implementation meant getting serious about how we approach professional learning across different modalities — performance coaching, teachers working with their principals, mentoring, or formal training.

One professional learning breakthrough was recognizing that learning how to lead change is as important as learning content. We partnered with external experts to help our leaders become certified trainers in organizational development. This is where working with a partner like SHRM or Symbiosis Coaching has been really helpful. The return on investment of our train-the-trainer models has been huge for the district — now we have internal capacity to lead this work authentically ourselves.

We have professional labs on campus where educators can observe strong pedagogy around building thinking classrooms and PBL, or they can request an observation for feedback. We’re committed to everyone doing things consistently across all levels of the system, with stages of support. We track where teachers are in their implementation, learning through situational leadership ourselves, assessing our teams based on those observable leadership qualities, and then sharing the full picture of strengths and needs.

We've also embraced 'freedom within a framework'. Teachers choose their professional development hours within our focused tenets. This choice-driven approach, combined with our commitment to hiring people with the right mindsets and immediately introducing them to leadership development through programs like The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, has transformed our culture.

Our AI journey is similar. Three years ago, instead of fearing AI, we leaned in with clear moral guidelines, safety protocols, and opportunities. We developed an AI leadership matrix that helps principals and teachers make AI actionable in their practice. Students even lead some of our lunch-and-learn sessions! Focusing on how this supports leadership development, problem solving, and other 21st century skills resonates really well with parents."