In 2021, Chancellor of DC Public Schools Lewis Ferebee identified sustainable leadership pipelines as a critical challenge to the district’s operations. DCPS’s teacher-leaders, assistant principals, and principals were working hard, but needed significant extra coaching to execute that work and stay in the profession. That’s when Ferrebee decided to create an office of leadership development which would not only recruit the best educators to the district but also implement a defined career ladder that would provide educators with the experiences they needed to become effective leaders. Chancellor Ferrebee turned to Dr. David Pinder to be the Chief of Leadership Development. 

In this episode of The Best of Us, we spoke to Dr. David Pinder about the challenges he has faced, and progress he has made in carrying out his charge of ensuring that leaders are prepared at each stage of their career with the full complement of skills and capacities necessary to guarantee student and school success. He shared his thoughts on a wide range of topics including the levers for empowering teachers, how to create a culture of innovation, the importance of creating professional learning opportunities that are directly related to what teachers ask for, how retention has become the new recruitment at DCPS, and more.