Instructional Leadership Association
The professional home for instructional leaders — working tools to get into classrooms and give better feedback, frameworks to grow teacher practice, plus weekly video and research. Start your free trial.
Trusted by more than 15,000 leaders in 50 countries
See the work — confidently get into classrooms every day
Grow the people — have feedback conversations that change teacher practice
Build the system — discover your best opportunities for school improvement
“Instructional leadership is the practice of making and implementing operational and improvement decisions in the service of student learning.”
—Justin Baeder, PhD
Three tiers of instructional leadership work:
Tier 1 · See the work
Repertoire Instructional Leader Productivity Suite
Get into every classroom and give feedback that sticks — the 21-day method from Now We’re Talking!, built into tools you open every day: Repertoire, Captures, Traction, Network, Daily Planner, plus Notes and Commute.
Repertoire
The professional writing app for instructional leaders. Get into every classroom. Give feedback in 60 seconds.
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
Your favorite feedback phrases are automatically saved as you type. Search-as-you-type suggestions—including your 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 to a spreadsheet (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.
Pinned Snippets
Pin relevant evaluation criteria on screen to guide your observation. No more flipping through a multi-page rubric document.
Captures
Voice memos, photos, and forwarded email — turned into action. Capture what you see, and AI does the rest.
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 reads the text 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.
Email Inbox
Every leader gets a private capture address. Forward an email — or have a colleague forward one — and its attachments and message become captures automatically.
Straight to the Right Tool
Point an inbox at a destination and forwarded items are filed for you — as a Repertoire entry, a Traction task, a Network contact, or a Note — with no manual step.
Traction
A task manager built for the reality of the principal's day. Not another generic to-do app.
Today View
See only what matters right now. No overwhelming backlog, no guilt-inducing list of hundreds of items. Just today's work.
Just Type It Plainly
Type "Email Ms. Garcia the formative assessment article by Friday" and Traction picks out 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.
Signals
A chronological log of every interaction with each person you lead — calls, emails, meetings, observations, informal conversations — captured automatically where possible.
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.
Printable Day, Pre-Filled
Generate a print-ready page for any date, pre-filled with today’s tasks, the key conversations to have, and the bell schedule for the day’s rotation. Clip it to a clipboard and go.
Write on Paper All Day
Check things off, jot walkthrough notes, add to-dos in the margin. It works the way paper does — no screen, no friction.
One Photo Updates Everything
Snap a photo of your page the next morning and your tools catch up automatically: checked items complete their tasks, new notes become tasks, and handwritten observations become Repertoire entries — and you confirm everything before it saves.
Conversations Stay Warm
The “Talked” and “Emailed” checkboxes next to each key conversation log as touchpoints in Network — your relationship history updates with no manual entry.
No Printer? Use Your Voice
Skip the paper entirely — record an end-of-day voice memo and the same review extracts your completed tasks, conversations, and walkthrough notes.
Notes
Rich notes and daily notes — with everything from your day in one place.
Daily Notes
A page for each day — gratitudes, your scorecard, key conversations, and freeform notes, all in one flow.
Captured Automatically
Voice memos and photos from Captures, and anything you save by voice on your Commute, land here as notes.
Freeform & Meeting Notes
Keep agendas, meeting notes, and running thoughts — searchable, and filed (or unfiled) however you like.
Commute
Plan and debrief your day by voice — hands-free, on the drive.
AM Plan, PM Debrief
Frame the day on the way in; reflect on the way home. The PM session pre-stages tomorrow.
Writes to Your Tools
Commitments you speak become Traction tasks, Network follow-ups, and Daily Note entries — read back for confirmation.
Private by Design
Your voice isn’t recorded; a short session summary is saved to your Daily Note instead.
Tier 2 · Grow the practice
Professional Practice Growth Suite
Define great teaching and evaluate it fairly — the approach from Mapping Professional Practice. Build the rubrics you observe with, then write evidence-based evaluations that pull straight from your classroom visits.
Framework
Build instructional frameworks and rubrics for growing teacher practice.
Rubric Builder
Define your key components and performance levels, with clear descriptors at each level. The shared language your team evaluates against.
Framework Library
Start from frameworks published by other instructional leaders, then adapt them to your school’s focus and context.
Import From a Photo
Photograph your district’s rubric or criteria document and turn it into a usable framework — no retyping.
Profiles
Write summative evaluations that pull evidence straight from your observations.
Evidence From Repertoire
Every observation you logged becomes evidence. Build the evaluation from the visits you already made — no scrambling at the deadline.
Domains & Components
Organize the evaluation by your framework’s domains and components, with a performance level and a narrative for each.
Coverage & Conflict Flags
See where your evidence is thin before you finalize, and catch ratings that conflict with the evidence behind them.
Tier 3 · Build the system · Atlas · Coming 2026
Capacity for System Improvement Suite
Map your school as a set of systems, rate their maturity, and find your highest-leverage improvements — the approach from Cultivate & Activate. Rolling out to members through 2026.
· Systems Map — your school by maturity
· Assessment — rate each system
· Best Opportunities — highest-leverage moves
· Improvement Plan — goals & action steps
Also included with every membership
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.
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