The Courage to Grow: Leading with Intentionality shows educational leaders how to design and carry out a leadership professional development plan. It is a guide that allows leaders to construct their own learning to measure knowledge, assess growth, and improve performance. This training manual is for the teacher leader, beginning principal, practicing principal, assistant principal, department chair, district office administrator, aspiring leadership candidate, and professor of principal preparation.
Chapters begin with a section called Learning with Intentionality, as defined as an intense energy or desire to grow exponentially, followed by a personal application of Caring with Intentionality. Chapters 2 - 7 include a leadership self-assessment utilizing the ISLLC Standards and conclude with growth activities. Depending on their leadership roles, the readers can select activities best suited to grow performance from present realities to ideal conditions for learning. The reader is then encouraged to design a personal Action Plan that takes into account knowledge from each chapter, strategies for growing performance with intentionality, and self-assessment results. Finally, each chapter includes websites, resources, and activities to improve leadership.