The mission of the nationally renowned Principal Leadership Institute (PLI) is to train educational leaders to be grounded in equity, social justice, and efffective teaching that is developmentally and culturally appropriate.
In order to do so, our students must see and feel what that actually looks like. Our longstanding partnership with AileyCamp, begun in 2015, provides that experience.
AileyCamp is a truly excellent model of what developmentally appropriate, culturally relevant, highly effective teaching and learning looks like for middle school children. The program proactively seeks out historically underserved middle school students. AileyCamp is staffed by educators who look like the students, who work collaboratively, who hold themselves and the students to loving, high expectations, and who consistently, year after year produce extraordinary long-term personal and academic growth in the students. The program serves as the model of the teaching and learning environment that we train our leaders to facilitate.
Our PLI students spend the first summer of their training analyzing AileyCamp and writing a semester-long paper on the experience, with the goal of applying that learning to their work in our schools. In turn, we support AileyCamp with recruitment efforts withiin our partner school districts. We also provide AileyCamp with written reflections and scholarship from our students to facilitate AileyCamp in its constant work to obtain the funding and resources needed to continue the program.
Even more specially, since AileyCamp uses the art of dance for this purpose without requiring prior dance experience or skill, the program serves as a living demonstration that the arts are not a privileged, exclusive, specialized endeavor, but rather, provide a joyful, powerfully effective platform for learning for all children.
Our educational leaders-in-training are inspired every year by experiencing what is truly possible in public education. We look forward to continuing this partnership for many years to come.