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Applied AI Literacy in Core Content Instruction
How should teachers think about AI literacy during core content blocks? View the webinar to learn about a framework that supports students in using AI to deepen their thinking, not bypass it. Framework developed in partnership with AI for Equity.
Defining and Developing Excellent Instruction: The Hendy Instructional Excellence Rubric Webinar
Are you confident in the tools you use to assess and develop teacher skills? View our recent webinar to learn about the Hendy Instructional Excellence Rubric, and how it can be used for teacher observation, coaching and support. Learn about free tools available to you, and training options to support implementation.
Catch-up with Our Latest Newsletter!
Back to school season is well underway! Read our latest newsletter for updates on our cohort programs, AI work, and new FREE learning series! Read the newsletter here.
What We Hope For Our Kids This School Year: Reflections from the Hendy Avenue Team
At Hendy Avenue Consulting, our daily work centers on strengthening schools, empowering educators, and supporting systems so that every student can thrive. Beyond our professional roles as strategists and coaches, we all return home each day to our own families. This dual perspective keeps our work deeply personal, grounded, and human.
Across our team, our students are starting a new year at every step of the PK-12 span: from welcoming a new baby and guiding curious Pre-K learners, to Hendy kids in Kindergarten and 2nd grade, to middle elementary (3rd and 4th), to middle schoolers in 6th and 7th grades, and to the oldest Hendy kid starting high school. As a new school year unfolds, we find ourselves reflecting on what we hope each milestone brings for our own children—not just academically, but socially, emotionally, and personally.
Across every grade level, we hope our children learn how to learn. We want them to develop the critical thinking skills necessary to navigate a complex world with curiosity and confidence. Equal to academic growth is our hope for character and connection. We want our kids to practice quiet kindness—the kind that expects no audience or praise. We hope they build meaningful friendships, discover how to be a good friend in return, and understand that sharing is about exchanging ideas and perspectives, not merely passing crayons or pencils across a desk. Ultimately, we hope to see them cultivate self-directed learning and genuine independence, taking pride in the journey of becoming who they are.
These hopes remind us why we do the work we do at Hendy Avenue Consulting. When we partner with leaders to design high-quality instruction and supportive school systems, we are keeping every child’s potential at the heart of our work.
To all the educators, leaders, students, and families stepping into this new school year: we wish you a year filled with discovery, growth, resilience, and joy.
Hendy’s CAO Cohort: An Interview with Facilitator Erica Murphy
As leaders gear up for a new school year, we caught up with Erica Murphy, the facilitator of our CAO Cohort. In this interview, Erica shares her reflections on 5 years of CAO cohort facilitation, and what leaders should consider as they launch a new school year.
Erica, we are about to launch the 6th CAO cohort! It’s hard to believe. What do you love most about facilitating this cohort and being in the room with these academic leaders year after year?
When I worked in one system I learned deeply one approach to leading the instructional side of a system. As the facilitator of the CAO cohort, I get to peer inside 6-10 different organizations and learn from their brilliance. We all do similar work and it’s infinitely helpful to see how different creative minds approach similar challenges. I always learn so much.
Looking back at where CAOs were focused in Year 1 of our cohort versus now, what are the most pressing, complex challenges you’re hearing from academic leaders right now as they step into this school year?
Lately, many school leaders seem to be focused around 3 key things:
- Improving math achievement, at scale across their system
- AI – how do we teach students responsible AI literacy when we are learning and things are constantly changing? Is this the right place to focus our limited resources?
- Developing systems and teams that focus on people development and outlast the direct impact of CAOs.
I really enjoy learning from our CAOs about how they are approaching these priorities, and bringing my own experience with our clients to the conversation.
One of the greatest benefits of this cohort is cross-pollination across different systems. What is one area where you’re most excited to see these CAOs problem-solve and learn from one another this year?
Strategic Thinking. It permeates everything a CAO does and underpins any good initiative or focus. At the end of the day, the specific focus that a CAO takes doesn’t actually matter if they are not approaching the work strategically.
What is the single most important mindset or piece of advice you find yourself reinforcing with CAOs as they step into a brand-new school year?
Be intentional. Prioritize and focus on what matters most. And lead with clarity.
Thanks so much Erica! We can’t wait to hear how the CAO cohort learns and grows together this year. Interested in learning more about Hendy’s cohort programs? Contact Jess at jessicawilson@hendyavenue.com.
Summer: The Strategic Bridge for School Leaders
For school system leaders, the “summer break” is a bit of a misnomer. While the hallways may be quieter, the mental load of leadership does not disappear. Despite leaders not “taking the summer off,” this season does offer a vital opportunity to step off the treadmill of daily operations and engage in the deep work of restoration and personal strategy.
Effective leaders use the summer months as a strategic bridge—connecting the lessons of the past school year with a proactive vision for the one to come. They do their future selves a favor and use the change in tempo to set up systems to help them be effective for when the pace steps up.
Prioritize Restoration and Rejuvenation
Before diving into plans, systems or schedules, the first priority for any leader should be rest. You cannot lead your students and staff effectively from a place of burnout. Restoration is not a luxury; it is a professional commitment to your staff and students. Here are some ways we’ve seen leaders create space for rest during the summer months:
- Set clear “off-campus” times where you are unreachable for non-emergencies.
- Use this time to read, travel, or engage in hobbies.
- By taking your own rest seriously, you give your team permission to do the same, which is essential for long-term sustainability.
Reflect on the Year that has Passed
Summer provides the space needed to look at the previous year objectively. While reflection on the year that has passed and planning for the future year begins much earlier than the summer, the quiet of the summer months provides a chance for reflection focused on the leader’s own personal systems.
Consider these questions for your reflection:
- What were the 1–2 biggest successes in my leadership this year?
- What were the most significant challenges or areas where my leadership could have been stronger?
- What personal systems worked well in my leadership this year? What are ways I could improve?
Personal Effectiveness: Setting Your Own Routines
Most system leaders know that planning for a successful school year launch begins long before summer hits. And, the slower pace of summer provides time to affirm the personal systems you will use to maintain balance and focus given your broader strategy. This includes creating schedules; routines; templates; and other systems that will help you balance the work when staff and students return in the fall.
For example, using the summer months to create your personal schedule can help you protect the sacred time you need to drive instructional improvement. A leader’s schedule should protect “sacred” times for:
- Teacher Observations and Support: Proactively blocking time before the year starts.
- Intellectual Preparation (IP) Time: Ensuring you are as prepared as the teachers you support.
- One-on-One Check-ins: Establishing a regular cadence for direct reports.
- Strategic White Space: Time reserved for response to data and troubleshooting.
By balancing restoration with personal strategy, you ensure that when the doors open in the fall, you aren’t just starting another year—you are leading a more effective, energized, and focused school. Our work coaching school system leaders often focuses on this balance of ensuring a strong strategy for your school with being able to execute on that strategy given strong personal systems. Are you interested in learning more about how we can support you with this balance? Reach out to Jess.
Revisiting Equity in Rubrics: The Hendy Instructional Excellence Rubric
A few years ago, we published a blog post, “Collaborating to Examine Teacher Observation Rubrics for Equity,” which marked a meaningful step in Hendy’s commitment to advancing diversity, equity, inclusiveness, and justice (DEIJ) through our expertise in teacher evaluation. The post detailed our initial, intentional work to examine teacher evaluation rubrics—a primary area of our influence—through an anti-racist lens.
Revisiting this work now offers a valuable opportunity to reflect on what we’ve learned, how the conversation has evolved, and the critical importance of sustained, deeper engagement in this area.
What We Set Out to Do (And Why It Still Matters)
Our initial thesis was simple: teacher evaluation rubrics, as drivers of teacher practice and leader coaching, must be improved to actively dismantle rather than inadvertently uphold dominant (and/or oppressive) norms, values, and culture.
To that end, we engaged a powerful, identity and role-diverse team of experts to critically examine four existing rubrics.
Our original goals for the examination remain – to identify:
- Language or expectations in the rubric that values white dominant norms, values, and culture over those of other racial groups;
- Language in the rubric that is supportive of equity (specific practices, mindset cues for teachers, etc.); and
- Missed opportunities in the rubric to advance equity of instruction for students.
Evolving Our Perspective: From Identification to Action
Since publishing the original post, our understanding and commitment have deepened in several key ways:
- Beyond “A Separate Indicator”: While our original piece discussed structural features like including DEIJ as a separate indicator versus baking it in, we now advocate for the latter. Placing equity in a single section risks making it a compliance check. Equity must be the lens through which all teaching indicators are viewed—from classroom environment and culture to instructional planning and assessment.
- The Role of the Student: Our initial examination surfaced the tension between student-focused and teacher-focused rubrics. Today, we emphasize that any equitable rubric must center the student experience. It’s not just about what the teacher does, but what students experience as a result, particularly students who have been historically marginalized. This requires rubrics to be exceptionally clear on the visible evidence of equitable student outcomes and agency.
The Hendy Instructional Excellence Rubric provides a vision of excellence in teaching and learning across K-12 classrooms of all subjects. It intentionally focuses on both teacher actions and student outcomes as a way to keep students at the center of the work. It also integrates equity as a lens across all indicators in the rubric.
Looking Ahead: Guidance for the Next Phase
Since this initial examination of equity in rubrics, and our publishing of the Hendy Instructional Excellence Rubric, our core belief has only strengthened: improving teacher observation rubrics is an essential step toward creating anti-racist schools where all students can succeed. The tool itself is powerful not just for evaluation, but for professional learning—it sets the expectation for what quality teaching means. And if that expectation doesn’t actively advance equity, it is actively hindering it.
We continue to be energized by the opportunity to engage with partners on this critical work. If you or your team are ready to move from identifying bias to designing for equity in your evaluation tools, or you want to give the Hendy Instructional Excellence Rubric a try, please reach out.
Building a Coherent, Network-Wide Evaluation and Coaching System: Excel Academy Charter Schools and Hendy Avenue
Since 2024, Excel Academy Charter Schools (Excel) and Hendy Avenue Consulting (Hendy) have partnered to design and implement a comprehensive, coherent system for developing, supporting, and evaluating both teachers and leaders across the network.
What began as rubric refinement and committee work evolved into a holistic system that now includes:
- A comprehensive Teacher Observation and Feedback Tool
- A School-Leader Evaluation System, including a year-long Leader Development & Evaluation Framework (LEDF) pilot
- A codified, network-wide instructional coaching model
- Embedded leadership coaching for senior academic leaders
Together, this partnership moved Excel from tool design to system implementation — aligning evaluation, coaching, and leadership development under one shared theory of change.
The Goals of the Work
Across phases (October 2024–June 2026), the partnership between Hendy and Excel centered on three major goals.
1. Articulate a Clear Vision of Excellence
Excel sought to define:
- What excellent teaching looks like.
- What excellent school leadership looks like.
- What excellent instructional coaching looks like.
- How all three connect in one coherent system.
Excel partnered with Hendy to design several tools and frameworks to codify these definitions. Together, Excel and Hendy created:
- A comprehensive Teacher Evaluation Tool – The Excel Observation Rubric
- A comprehensive School-Leader Evaluation System
- A unified Leader Development & Evaluation Framework (LEDF) pilot for 2025–26
The goal was not just documentation — it was clarity. Leaders and teachers needed a shared understanding of excellence and growth. These frameworks provide that clarity.
2. Operationalize the Vision Through Implementation
While quality tools that define excellence is a start, implementation of that definition with aligned support is what really changes practice. In 2025-26, Hendy and Excel’s work shifted explicitly toward operationalization of these frameworks. This work has included piloting the LEDF across the network. This pilot includes:
- Training for evaluators.
- Collecting feedback through surveys and focus groups.
- Refining guidebooks based on that feedback, and building supporting materials.
The work has also included executing on a coherent instructional coaching model across the network. Hendy has worked with Excel instructional coaches to:
- Train coaches and leaders on a defined coaching model.
- Conduct site visits at schools to support coaching and development around elements of the coaching model.
- Host recurring professional development and office hours to provide both proactive and responsive support for coaching.
3. Build Internal Leadership Capacity
Beyond tools, Excel wanted to refine leadership muscle. Over the two years of our partnership, Hendy has supported building Excel leadership capacity through leadership coaching for the Managing Director of Academic Leadership and the Director of Talent. Our work has also included ongoing weekly strategic check-ins with the Chief Schools Officer to ensure coherence and alignment across the work. And, Hendy has worked to develop internal facilitation capacity by creating training sessions that Excel leaders are supported to deliver directly to staff. The long-term goal of this support is to ensure that Excel can sustain excellence without the support of an external partner.
The Partnership Model
The success of the partnership between Excel and Hendy is rooted not just in goals and deliverables, but in the nature of the partnership.
1. Strategic, Not Transactional
The weekly check-ins with senior leadership created a rhythm of decision-making, troubleshooting, prioritization and iteration. This work is not “deliver and disappear” consulting. It is embedded strategy work.
2. Co-Construction with Stakeholders
Committee structures were central in both teacher and leader system design. Excel leaders participated in design sessions; provide feedback; pilot components; and refine language and tools. Co-construction has created buy-in to the strategies, and helped to avoid change fatigue so common when new initiatives are implemented.
3. Change Management Embedded Throughout
Each of Hendy’s scopes of work with Excel anticipate change-management challenges:
- Balance feedback with decisiveness.
- Avoid overwhelming stakeholders.
- Clarify messaging.
- Stage implementation in phases.
Communication drafts, surveys, focus groups, and steering committees are intentional levers — not afterthoughts.
Results to Date
Excel’s effort to define excellence and implement systems is ongoing. By mid-pilot (SY25–26), Excel has:
- An embedded and system-wide adopted Teacher Observation Rubric.
- A unified leader evaluation framework.
- A year-long pilot generating structured feedback on the LEDF.
- A structured coaching model with ongoing PD.
- Internal leaders trained to implement and refine systems.
- Clear alignment between coaching and evaluation.
The system now connects: Teacher Practice → Coaching → Leader Practice → Evaluation → Growth
Conclusion
Over two years, Hendy and Excel have moved from defining excellence to implementing excellence.
The work has shifted Excel from:
- Tools → Systems
- Isolated PD → Coherent development arc
- Informal coaching → Codified coaching model
- Static evaluation → Iterative pilot with feedback loops
The next phase (SY26–27) positions Excel for full implementation of a coherent, internally sustained development system. Hendy is thrilled to continue to partner with Excel in this critical work.
Interested in a partnership with Hendy? Reach out to Jess to schedule a call.
Catch up with our latest newsletter!
Want to know what we’ve been up to at Hendy? Check out our latest newsletter for updates about our cohorts, clients, resources and more! Click here to view the newsletter, and reach out if we can support you this year!
Meet the 2025-26 Chief Academic Officer Cohort!
We’re thrilled to introduce our newest Chief Academic Officer Cohort class! This exceptional group of academic leaders from high-performing charter networks across the country will spend the year collaborating, problem-solving, and pushing each other’s practice.
Here’s to a year of growth, learning, and collective impact as we get to know each outstanding member of our cohort.
Meet Our 2025-26 Cohort Members
Tomi Okuyemi: Chief Academic Officer, Growing Up Green Charter Schools
Tomi serves as Chief Academic Officer at Growing Up Green Charter Schools in Jamaica, Queens, where she champions the values of kindness, courage, collaboration, and social justice. Her journey from science teacher at Success Academy to beloved 1st grade teacher at Community Roots Charter School shows her deep commitment to students at every level. With an M.Ed. in School Leadership from Harvard Graduate School of Education and experience as a Leadership Resident in Boston Public Schools, Tomi brings rich expertise in equity and inclusion. She joined the GUGCS community in 2021, drawn to its diverse faculty and families who share her passion for social justice.
Tonya Randall: VP of Academics, Journey Community Schools
With over two decades of educational leadership experience, Tonya brings incredible expertise in driving transformational change—including an impressive 28% increase in K–8 reading proficiency and 27% gain in math at Journey Community Schools this past year. From founding Nexus STEM Academy to securing $1.5M+ in grants for innovation and summer learning, Tonya’s commitment to historically underserved students shines through everything she does. Her background spans KIPP schools, instructional coaching, and data-driven leadership, with degrees from Spelman College and Walden University.
Sabrina Banwait: Director of Curriculum and Instruction, Hebrew Public Schools
Sabrina brings over 13 years of transformative leadership across Chicago, Los Angeles, and NYC urban schools. From classroom teacher to instructional leader, Sabrina’s journey reflects her unwavering commitment to equity and social justice. As a proud alum of the University of Chicago’s Urban Teacher Education Program, she continues to champion culturally responsive pedagogy and teacher preparation. Sabrina’s expertise in instructional design and leadership development centers on building capacity through coaching and collaboration. Her work with school leaders and teacher teams exemplifies her belief in public education’s power to create lasting, multigenerational change.
Dr. Keena Day: Chief Academic Officer, Breakthrough Schools
Dr. Keena Day is a 20-year literacy specialist who leads school districts, networks, and school leadership to develop systems in curriculum and assessment design to improve student achievement. As Chief Academic Officer of Breakthrough Schools in Cleveland, she is skilled in grades 4-12, AP Language and AP Literature coursework that allows for equitable access, dual enrollment, and literacy intervention. She has taught Freshman Composition, Technical and Creative Writing at the collegiate level. Her Masters programming focused on Africana Studies and Black Literature, Linguistics, Literacy, and Writing. Her research focuses on integration of literacy and social studies content, cultural studies in schools, DEI in text selection, organizational literacy structures, and closing the literacy achievement gap for various demographics of students.
Meet Our Facilitator: Erica Murphy
Leading this incredible cohort is Erica Murphy, who brings deep expertise in academic leadership development. In addition to facilitating the CAO cohort, Erica has spent five years with Hendy Avenue Consulting supporting school systems and charter management organizations nationwide on academic strategy, AI literacy, coaching to academic excellence, mathematics instruction, performance evaluation rubrics, and more.
Erica creates spaces where CAOs can push each other to excel, share best practices, and build lasting professional relationships. Under her guidance, our cohort members will tackle real challenges, exchange valuable resources, and strengthen their commitment to achieving stellar academic outcomes for students.
What Makes The CAO Cohort Special
Our Chief Academic Officer Cohort brings academic leaders together to learn alongside trusted colleagues in similar roles. Through the cohort, members sharpen their vision, build their skills, exchange resources, problem solve, build relationships, and feel more fulfilled in their roles.
This dynamic group represents some of the most innovative academic minds in charter education, united by their commitment to educational equity and their dedication to driving meaningful change in their networks.
Interested in learning more about how CAO cohort participation can level up the leadership and impact of your senior academic leaders? Ready to explore leadership development opportunities? Connect with Hendy Avenue Consulting about leadership coaching, CAO cohort participation for 2026-27, and additional opportunities to partner for just-in-time support to your organization.