The Middle School Leader Internship (MSLI) is a 5-week, full-time professional internship designed to provide teachers interested in entering or advancing in careers in school-level leadership with the knowledge, skills and experiences necessary to pursue these opportunities, with a specific focus on middle schools.
MSLI is designed with three primary goals:
- To inspire participants to pursue leadership opportunities within NYC middle schools
- To create a leadership learning opportunity that will enable participants to accurately assess their own professional learning trajectory and their development along the school leader competency continuum
- To serve as a springboard towards leadership pipelines to fill critical talent gaps across our city’s Middle Schools
MSLI interns will have 3 key experiences to meet these goals:
- School-based mentoring with a high-performing principal
- Weekly school leadership seminars
- Creation of a culminating project and presentation.
MSLI helps teachers build their leadership skills by combining school-based, hands-on experiences with a theoretical leadership framework focused on pillars of transformational, instructional and organizational leadership to drive dramatic gains for students. All of this is accomplished through a cohort model built to support leader interns along their developmental path.
"I could not have asked for a more appropriate summer experience. My mentor principal modeled so naturally many of the theories I have learned about. This experience has made me consider becoming a turnaround principal. In spite of it all, good or bad, I really saw that resilience is driven by the desire and passion to help students be successful."
-Leader Intern, 2012 Summer Cohort
Application and Selection Process
Teachers interested in applying for the 2013 Cohort will go through a rigorous application process that entails an online application and in-person interview. In this second year, we are looking for up to 25 teachers to join the 2013 cohort. Program timelines below.
- Final Deadline - March 1: The 2013 Application is now closed.
- Submit the online application including 3 essays and a resume
- March: In-Person Interviews
- Candidates who pass the application screen, will be invited to an in-person interview
- March-April: Mentor matching process
- Accepted candidates will be paired with a mentor principal
- Early May: Meet & Greet
- Mentors and mentees come together to celebrate the official program launch and begin to establish norms and expectations for the experience
- July: Middle School Leader Internship
- Candidates report to host schools 4 days a week and come together for coursework on Fridays
Eligibility Guidelines
- Current NYC DOE teachers, with at least 3 years of successful teaching experience, preferably in 6-8th grades, but open to K-12
- Teachers with at least 1 year of successful adult leadership experience, including formal and informal roles
- Teachers seeking or considering school leadership certification/placement in 1-3 years
- Teachers demonstrating strong interest in serving in NYC public middle schools
What can Leader Interns expect?
- Work directly with a mentor principal 4 days of the week for 5 weeks during summer school
- Engage with a leadership curriculum aligned to the NYC Quality Review Indicators every week
- Develop a major project with the support of the mentor principal
- Join a cohort of like-minded peers and colleagues
- Interns receive a $2,800 stipend for participation in the summer internship
Key dates:
Final Deadline: March 1 - The Application is now closed.
Program: 5 weeks during summer school (July-August 2013)
Contact: To learn more about our program or to receive notification of the application launch, please email: MiddleSchoolInternship@schools.nyc.gov.
"This program helped me see that being a school leader is a new type of challenge that I'm nervous, but excited to take on. With the curriculum, I was also able to pinpoint the areas of leadership I feel stronger in and the areas I need to focus on developing more."
-Leader Intern, 2012 Summer Cohort