Diverse Charter Schools Coalition

Leading From Within: Developing Your Personal Leadership through the Compass Leader Framework

Staff from any of DCSC’s active member schools or school networks are eligible to join any group at no cost.

CoP Theory of action:

  • Connect as leaders across DCSC’s intentionally integrated member schools, so that practitioners can share experiences and build relationships.
  • Grow expertise in how they iterate upon best practices of diversity, equity, and inclusion to support all students.
  • Bring justice to education through developing tools for the field that disrupt the persisting status quo of racial and social inequality in schools.
join a community of practice in 26-27
Our Faciliators
Travis Commons
Valor Collegiate Academies
Sara Carlson Striegel
Valor Collegiate Academies

Overview

Leadership begins with self-awareness. This Community of Practice will guide participants through the Self Domain of our Compass Leadership Framework, focusing on six core capacities that support purposeful, equity-centered leadership:

  • Finds Leadership Center
  • Has a Flexible Identity
  • Leads with Purpose
  • Expands Worldview and Capacity
  • Has a Strong Sense of Inner Knowing
  • Embraces Discomfort to Confront Bias

Through reflection, dialogue, and practice, participants will explore how their internal beliefs, stories, and experiences shape how they lead—and how greater alignment can support transformative impact.

Join us to:

  • Deepen your leadership self-awareness
  • Practice tools for presence, purpose, and reflection
  • Engage with a community of thoughtful, values-driven leaders

Ideal Participant Profile: This Community of Practice is designed for leaders who are responsible for shaping people and systems within schools or across networks.

Participants are:

  • School or system-level leaders (e.g., principals, assistant principals, instructional leaders, district or network staff);
  • Responsible for managing and developing others, including teams, staff, or cohorts of leaders;
  • Influencing systems and structures, with the ability to apply learning within their school, department, or organization.

Participants are ready to:

      • Engage in deep self-reflection and examine how their identity, beliefs, and experiences shape their leadership;
      • Explore personal leadership patterns, including how they respond under pressure or in moments of complexity;
      • Sit with discomfort and growth, particularly when reflecting on bias, power, and decision-making;
      • Translate internal learning into meaningful shifts in how they lead others and systems.
Dates and times:
  • October 1, 2 – 3:30pm ET  (Kick off with all CoPs)
  • October 6, 12 – 1:15pm ET
  • October 20, 12 – 1:15pm ET
  • November 2, 12 – 1:15pm ET(Monday session bc of Election Day)
  • November 17, 12 – 1:15pm ET
  • December 1, 12 – 1:15pm ET
  • December 15, 12 – 1:15pm ET
  • January 12, 12 – 1:15pm ET
  • February 3, 2pm PT – In-person Las Vegas NV

Facilitator Bios

Sara Carlson Striegel has spent nearly two decades in education, serving in various roles including becoming the founding principal of an elementary school in Northwest Denver. In 2021, Sara joined the Impact team as a director of leadership development. In her role, Sara coaches and supports education leaders across various settings, including charter school networks and traditional districts nationwide. She now leads the Compass in Leadership Program, which blends leadership best practices with emotional and physical well-being, as well as identity development through a relationship-based approach. Sara also co-leads the Circle Facilitator Course designed to train and credential individual facilitators in Valor’s Compass Circle model. Being both bilingual and biracial, Sara brings a deep appreciation for navigating diverse cultural systems while fostering authentic identity development and sustainable wellbeing practices.

Dr. Travis Commons has worked as an educator and researcher across a variety of settings, ranging from residential and clinical treatment to traditional and charter public schools. In 2014, Travis relocated from his long-time home of Chicago to Nashville to be the founding principal at Valor’s first school site — Flagship Academy — which has been the top performing open-enrollment middle school in the district every year since its opening. In 8 short years, Valor has become an innovation hub for pioneering a comprehensive human development (CHD) approach to schooling, centered around The Compass – an integration of habits of academic success, social-emotional learning, and identity development in a relationship-based approach to growth. Dr. Commons now leads the network’s National Impact Team, in which he and his team offer a range of transformative offerings and certification programs that mitigate barriers and create pathways to connection and belonging in schools.

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