Laura Mitchell at Cincinnati Public Schools

Abstract

Laura Mitchell began her career as a teacher in an affluent school outside of Atlanta and then returned a year later to her hometown of Cincinnati, to an urban school with a high poverty rate. The case details Mitchell's journey throughout her teaching and administrative career, and challenges the reader to change the way one thinks about Instructional Leadership. Excerpt UVA-BP-0554 Jun. 11, 2012 Laura Mitchell at Cincinnati Public Schools Laura Mitchell began her career as a teacher in an affluent school outside of Atlanta and then returned a year later to her hometown of Cincinnati, to an urban school with a high poverty rate. Mitchell said of the transition: It became very evident to me that this was really the place that I was supposed to be—having a positive impact on students for whom being at school every day made a significant difference. Throughout my career, I've thought about the role that I play in the lives of children as being truly a mission and a social-justice issue; it's very, very important for me, and it drives the work I do. What do we have to put into place so that we instill strong values and a sense of education in them so that they can go on to do anything that they really want to do? After teaching for a number of years at a variety of grade levels, Mitchell accepted the opportunity to attend a leadership development program at the University of Cincinnati. Continuing to teach while she attended the program, Mitchell became assistant principal for a year and then principal at Westwood School, a prekindergarten-through-eighth-grade neighborhood school. Mitchell left Westwood School after five years to join the Cincinnati Public Schools (CPS) Instructional Support Team, where she was responsible for providing instructional leadership coaching to principals at 26 schools in the district. This assignment led to a position at the Stupski Foundation in San Francisco, where she focused on leadership development in five large urban districts across the country. One year later, Mitchell returned to CPS as the deputy superintendent. . . .