Instructional Leadership Association
Join the ILA for Repertoire, Captures, Traction, Network, Ascend, the Instructional Leadership Show, Marshall Memo, courses, and everything you need to lead instruction.
Instructional Leadership Association
Everything you need to build capacity for instructional leadership
Confidently get into classrooms every day
Have feedback conversations that change teacher practice
Discover your best opportunities for school improvement
$99/month or $999/year · Cancel anytime · 30-day guarantee
Trusted by more than 15,000 leaders in 50 countries
Repertoire
The professional writing app for instructional leaders. Get into every classroom. Give feedback in 60 seconds.
Next Up
M. Chen
18 days ago
T. Williams
12 days ago
R. Patel
9 days ago
S. Johnson
7 days ago
A. Brooks
5 days ago
M. Chen — Grade 4 Math
Today, 10:14 am · 8 min
Students working in pairs on fraction problems. Most are on task. Two students at back off task.
T circulates, uses proximity with off-task students. Good questioning: "What do you notice about the denominator?"
Whole group share-out. T cold-calls, waits 5s for response. Student explains strategy clearly.
Search snippets — "questioning", "wait time", "cold call"…
Next Up Button
Never wonder who to visit. Repertoire automatically suggests the teacher with the longest time since your last visit, so no one gets overlooked.
Snippets
Search-as-you-type feedback phrases aligned to Danielson, Marzano, or your custom evaluation criteria. Cut your keystrokes by up to 90%.
Save & Email
Send feedback from your own email address with one tap. Teachers get a personal message, not an app notification.
Timestamps
Capture timestamped low-inference notes line by line as you observe. Switch between notetaking and feedback anytime.
Teacher Schedules
See each teacher's class schedule, find prep periods for follow-up conversations, and rotate visits across the school day.
Roster Coverage
See at a glance who you've visited and who you've missed. Export data as CSV for your records.
Practice Profiles
Connect your daily observations to summative evaluations. AI analyzes your entries for evidence, flags thin coverage, and identifies conflicts.
Templates
Drag-and-drop, multiple-choice, fill-in-the-blank templates for recommendation letters, evaluations, emails, and more.
Pinned Snippets
Pin relevant evaluation criteria on screen to guide your observation. No more flipping through a multi-page rubric document.
Captures
Voice memos and photos, turned into action. Record what you see, and AI does the rest.
Inbox
Voice memo
0:42 · Today 10:22 am
"Visited Ms. Chen, grade 4 math. Strong questioning, wait time was excellent. Follow up on the two students who were off task in the back—check in with her Thursday."
Photo — Staff roster
Yesterday · 24 names extracted
Convert to
AI extracted
Voice Memos
Record audio in the hallway after a visit. AI transcribes it and extracts teacher name, date, subject, and observation details automatically.
Photo Capture
Photograph documents, student work, or whiteboard notes. AI-powered OCR reads and digitizes everything, even multi-page documents.
Convert to Action
Turn any capture into a Repertoire entry, a Traction task, or a Network contact with one tap. Nothing falls through the cracks.
Traction
A task manager built for the reality of the principal's day. Not another generic to-do app.
Areas
Today
5Instruction
12Operations
8Personnel
4Q3 PD Plan
6Focus
23:41
Today — Monday, April 7
5 tasks
Classroom visits — Chen, Williams, Patel
Follow up with Ms. Chen re: off-task students
Instruction · from Repertoire
Review Q3 PD survey results
Q3 PD Plan
Budget variance report — send to district
Operations
Check in with new hire T. Williams
Personnel
Add task… e.g. "Email Garcia the article by Friday"
Today View
See only what matters right now. No overwhelming backlog, no guilt-inducing list of hundreds of items. Just today's work.
Natural Language Input
Type "Email Ms. Garcia the formative assessment article by Friday" and Traction parses the date, priority, and context automatically.
T-Shirt Task Sizes
Tag every task XS through XL so you can see at a glance what's a quick win versus a real project. Filter by size to find a 5-minute job between meetings.
Areas & Projects
Organize by ongoing areas (Instruction, Operations, Personnel) and finite projects (Q3 PD plan, budget prep, new teacher onboarding).
Observation Follow-Ups
Link tasks to teachers and classroom visits so every observation leads to a follow-up conversation or action — and so a completed task automatically logs as a touchpoint in Network.
Pulls From Your Paper Planner
Photograph yesterday's filled-in Daily Planner page and Traction marks the right scorecard items complete, creates the new ones you wrote in, and pins what you said to do tomorrow — no retyping.
Network
Relationship management for school leaders. Never forget who needs what.
Check In Soon
T. Williams
No contact — 14 days
R. Patel
Last: 8 days ago
S. Johnson
Last: 6 days ago
A. Brooks
Last: 5 days ago
T. Williams
Grade 2 · New teacher, 2nd year
Notes
Strong classroom management. Struggling with differentiation for below-grade readers. Mentioned stress re: parent conference season. Check in weekly through EOQ.
Touch Log
Hallway check-in — mentioned feeling overwhelmed with IEP paperwork
14 days ago
Classroom visit · feedback sent — good pacing, cold-call technique
21 days ago
Post-observation conference — goal set: differentiation strategies
28 days ago
Touch Logs
A chronological record of every interaction with each person you lead. Calls, emails, meetings, observations, informal conversations.
Check-In Reminders
Surface people you haven't connected with recently. Customizable per person so high-need staff get more frequent check-ins.
Rich Notes
Keep a running dossier for each person: strengths, goals, concerns, personal details, and anything that helps you lead them well.
Daily Planner
The bridge between paper and pixels. Print your day. Use it on the move. Photograph it the next morning. Watch your tasks, contacts, and observations update themselves.
Tuesday
May 14 · A Day
Scorecard
- ✓ Approve PD budget
- ✓ Email Wilson re: walkthrough
- □ Draft staff memo
- □ Call district about bus route
Key Conversations
- Carlos Garcia✓ Talked
- Ava Wilson✓ Emailed
Daily Notes
M. Chen — Strong gradual release in 4th period…
Review & Approve
SCORECARD › 4 items detected
KEY CONVERSATIONS › 2 signals to log
WALKTHROUGHS › 1 detected
M. Chen — new Repertoire entry will be created
Personalized Printable PDF
Generate a print-ready planner page for any date, pre-filled with your scorecard tasks for the day, key conversations rotated across the week from your Network, and the printed bell schedule for the day's rotation. Designed to clip to a clipboard and survive a day of classroom visits.
Reads Your Handwriting
Photograph your filled-in page the next morning. AI vision parses your checkmarks, tally marks, freeform notes, and hand-written additions — even the items you penciled in mid-day — with no manual transcription.
Closes the Loop on Tasks
Checked items mark the matching Traction task complete. New items you wrote in become new tasks. Anything you flag "do tomorrow" gets pinned to the next planning day's scorecard automatically.
Tracks Conversations in Network
"Talked" and "Emailed" checkboxes next to each Key Conversation become Network signals against the matching contact. Your relationship history stays warm without a single manual log entry.
Detects Walkthroughs from Notes
Paragraphs in the Daily Notes section that lead with a roster-matched teacher name are recognized as walkthroughs and proposed as Repertoire entries during review. Your handwritten observation becomes a real entry with two clicks.
Schedule Rotation Aware
Tomorrow is a B Day? The planner knows. Each printed page is stamped with the rotation type and prints the correct bell schedule for starred teachers, so you can plan when to drop in.
Voice-Memo Alternative
No printer? Record an end-of-day voice memo on your phone instead. The same review screen extracts your completed tasks, conversations, and walkthrough notes from the audio.
Re-Review Anytime
Approved a scan too quickly? Open it again and re-approve. Every write is idempotent — nothing duplicates, nothing gets out of sync. Edit anything before you commit.
Confidence-Aware Review
Bad lighting or a blurry photo? The review screen tells you upfront when it couldn't read the page clearly and offers to retake before you waste time editing. Wrong document entirely? It catches that too.
Ascend Career Toolkit
Advance your career with confidence
Six purpose-built tools for the next step in your leadership journey. From resume to offer letter.
Tracker
Kanban pipeline for every application. Track jobs from posting to offer with checklists, timelines, contacts, and notes.
Portfolio
Build a library of leadership experiences. Add via email, paste from your resume, record audio, or type manually.
Refine
AI coaching that asks follow-up questions to strengthen your answers. Pulls relevant experiences from your Portfolio.
Interview Prep
Practice with real principal interview questions. Record video or audio answers, then send them to Refine for coaching.
References
Track reference status from Not Asked to Received. Link references to specific jobs and note what each person speaks to.
Templates
Leadership resume templates, cover letter frameworks, and interview talking points to get you started fast.
Content & Learning
Instructional Leadership Show
Weekly video episodes with practical strategies for getting into classrooms, giving better feedback, and leading instruction. Watch on your schedule, with downloadable slides and transcripts.
Marshall Memo
Kim Marshall's weekly digest of the most important K-12 research and news. Full archive, searchable by topic. Download articles to share with your staff or PLC.
Courses & Certifications
Classroom Walkthrough Certification (EDCW), Teacher Evaluation Certification (EDTE), Ascend Masterclass, and the Instructional Leadership Challenge. Self-paced with progress tracking.
Classroom Walkthrough Toolbox
3-Cycle Startup Plan, Classroom Walkthrough Tracker, Schedule Generator, Index Cards, Interruption Matrix, Communication Scripts, Feedback Phrase Bank, and the 7 Keys to Sustainable Impact.
Also Included
Monthly
Cancel anytime. 30-day money-back guarantee.
Annual
Save $189/year. Purchase order accepted.
Need a purchase order, group pricing, or lifetime membership? Contact us
About Justin Baeder, PhD
Justin Baeder, PhD is Director of The Principal Center, where he helps senior leaders in K–12 organizations build capacity for instructional leadership. A former principal in Seattle Public Schools, he is the creator of the Instructional Leadership Challenge, which has helped more than 10,000 school leaders in 50 countries around the world:
- Confidently get into classrooms every day
- Have feedback conversations that change teacher practice
- Discover their best opportunities for school improvement
Dr. Baeder directs the Instructional Leadership Association, the premiere professional membership for school leaders, and is the author of three Solution Tree books on instructional leadership:
- Now We’re Talking! 21 Days to High-Performance Instructional Leadership
- Mapping Professional Practice: How to Develop Instructional Frameworks to Support Teacher Growth (with Heather Bell-Williams)
- Cultivate and Activate: Building Teacher Capacity for Instructional Leadership (with Keith Fickel)
Justin is the host of Principal Center Radio, a long-running audio podcast featuring more than 400 education thought leaders and more than 500 books, as well as The Teaching Show and The Eduleadership Show. A prolific education commentator, he has more than 250,000 followers and 30,000,000 annual impressions on social media, and is frequently consulted by major media outlets on issues of education research, policy, and practice.
As a consultant, trainer, and speaker, Dr. Baeder has worked onsite with groups across the US, Canada, and Central America, and virtually with groups across the Middle East, Australia, and around the world. He is a frequent speaker at conferences, and regularly provides administrator professional development on classroom walkthroughs, teacher evaluation, and instructional leadership.
He holds a PhD in Educational Leadership & Policy Studies from the University of Washington and an MEd in Curriculum & Instruction from Seattle University, and is a graduate of the Danforth Program for Educational Leadership at UW.
30-Day Money-Back Guarantee
We guarantee that the Instructional Leadership Association will increase your effectiveness as a leader. If you're ever feeling stuck, reach out for guidance and we'll help you focus on the most powerful actions to increase your productivity and impact.
You can cancel anytime. If you're not 100% satisfied with your membership, we offer a full refund within your first 30 days.
Ready to lead with confidence?
Join thousands of instructional leaders who use The Principal Center to get into classrooms, give better feedback, and drive real improvement.
$99/month or $999/year · Cancel anytime · 30-day guarantee