Timothy Kelley has been the Director of the International School of Stuttgart, for the past 10 years. He is also the Chair of the Association of German International Schools, an organization that directs essential lobbying and educational initiatives for member schools. He is a member of the Academy for International School Heads, the Association for the Advancement of International Education and the European Council of International Schools. He is also recipient of a Klingenstein Fellowship on Educational Leadership and serves on multiple advisory boards including Rotary Stuttgart, the Carlsbad International School and the German/American Exchange Foundation in Munich. 

A New Perspective on Leadership in Schools: Are Heads of Departments Necessary?
This workshop plans to provoke its attendees to critically evaluate their own school’s leadership journey, face “brutal truths” and provide exemplars and suggestions that can help build a more sustainable and efficient leadership for learning culture in their schools.

Re-implementing leadership is a strategic opportunity.  It inspires us to move away from making “consumerist” changes to a more sustainable and efficient focus on learning. This requires an evaluation of a school’s organizational maturity and being willing to pursue leadership philosophies that build on “networks.” If we can accept Kevin Kruse’s definition that “leadership is a process of social influence that maximizes the efforts of others, toward the achievement of a goal,” than we can see the impact of this leadership initiative not only in the school’s organization, but in the classroom as well.

This workshop will provide practical strategies, discuss anecdotal evidence and apply key leadership theories to help schools build a more inclusive culture of leading for learning.

All educators will find this decentralized leadership approach appealing on both a budgetary and educational level.  It provides an opportunity to create “guiding coalitions” that empower efficient and inspiring ways of implementing a sustainable school vision and mission for all constituencies.

Driving Learning Forward: How established international schools can embrace educational evolution and change.
This workshop plans to provoke its attendees to critically evaluate their own school’s focus on learning, face “brutal truths” and provide exemplars and suggestions that can help build a greater awareness and acceptance of a more collaborative teaching and learning philosophy.

International schools have been used to being ahead of the curve but now schools with globally mobile communities are at a crossroads.  While enrollment demand for our education seems to be growing, learning and teaching expectations have been buffeted by corporate and parental expectations, changing views on knowledge, math and linguistics and more practical concerns such as the evolution of what accreditation agencies and curriculum organizations like the IB define as successful learning and teaching.

This workshop will provide practical strategies, discuss anecdotal evidence and illustrate a case study and process that has helped a “traditional” IB International school embrace the future of learning. Teachers, and other school leaders (including the Board of Trustees) will find this analysis of an actual example helpful in providing insight on how to coordinate community reviews, changing accreditation processes and the acceptance of new norms. The workshop will also show how to purpose and re-purpose vision and guiding statements to provide a genuinely collaborative strategic planning that focuses on the new expectations of accreditation organizations, the IB and best practice, research-based learning and teaching.