Independent school leaders describe Summer Institute as a career-changing experience — and return to their schools with greater clarity, confidence, and community.
Again and again, attendees describe Summer Institute not simply as a professional-development event, but as a turning point: the place where a new leader found her footing, an experienced administrator rediscovered his energy, and colleagues who had felt alone in their work found “their people.”
After a week spent working alongside independent school professionals who understand your role, your pressures, and the decisions awaiting you back on campus — "The best week of my entire career," is a striking statement, but not an isolated one.
That is the experience educators and school leaders carried home from ISM Summer Institute in Salt Lake City. They came from 129 schools across 34 states, Washington, D.C., Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and three Canadian provinces. They arrived with different titles and challenges. They left with something remarkably consistent: greater clarity about what to do next — and a network that would help them do it.
What is ISM Summer Institute?
ISM Summer Institute is an immersive, weeklong professional learning experience for independent school leaders, faculty, and administrators. Participants learn in small, role-specific cohorts, apply research-informed practices to real school challenges, build usable plans and tools, and form peer relationships that continue after the event. The result is professional development designed to strengthen both an individual’s career and the school community that person serves.
You arrive with a role. You leave with a way forward.
Summer Institute is built around a deceptively simple idea: the most useful professional learning begins with the realities of your actual job. Instead of moving between short, disconnected sessions, attendees spend the week in a focused, role-specific cohort — studying the work in depth with facilitators who know independent schools and peers facing many of the same questions.
The week is active by design. Participants work through difficult student and family scenarios, examine case studies, build roadmaps and 100-day plans, analyze institutional data, compare approaches, and pressure-test decisions before the school year begins. Candid questions that may be hard to voice at home can be explored with people who understand the stakes.
For someone stepping into a new position, that kind of preparation can change the first year entirely. One new lower school head, Sarah F., wrote that the experience helped her “clarify priorities, grow my confidence, and shape a thoughtful 100-day action plan.”
Kelsey M., transitioning from the classroom into admissions at Montessori School of Denver, called the New Admissions Director workshop the perfect start to her next chapter and left “inspired, energized, and ready for the school year ahead.”
Hiram C., who attended Leading the Effective Upper School, described the shift even more plainly: “As a brand-new admin to the school and position, I would have been constantly blindsided by what was going to be asked of me. This workshop removed the scales from my eyes, and now I can see.”
The benefit does not stop with the person who attends.
When a school invests in Summer Institute, it is not only developing one employee. It is strengthening the work the employee influences every day: how a division is led, how families experience admission, how donors are engaged, how faculty are supported, how student needs are met, and how decisions move from good intentions to consistent practice.
Wesleyan School’s experience offers a useful picture. Five faculty members and administrators attended workshops aligned with their new or evolving responsibilities.
- An incoming middle school principal returned with a fresh perspective on leadership transition and the needs of middle school students.
- An incoming assistant director of admissions came home with short- and long-term goals, stronger practices in events and data, and new relationships with admissions professionals across the country.
- Three department chairs studied how to lead faculty, strengthen culture, support teaching excellence, and connect department-level work to school-wide goals.
Their takeaways were individual, but their value was institutional. Each person returned with ideas, language, tools, and relationships that could travel into team meetings, planning conversations, and the daily experience of students and families.
The same theme appeared in other attendee reflections. Meghan H. wrote that she and a colleague were bringing back “a wealth of ideas and resources to implement with our teams.” Tiffany S., a new advancement leader, expected to build a stronger technical foundation. She left with that foundation — and with a community of development professionals who had openly shared their successes, challenges, and hard-won experience.
The network is not a side benefit. It is part of the learning.
Leadership in an independent school can be deeply relational and surprisingly isolating. The more specialized the role, the fewer people on campus may fully understand its demands. Summer Institute changes that equation by placing participants in small cohorts with genuine peers: people who can share a template, challenge an assumption, answer the question behind the question, and pick up the phone months later when a new situation arises.
Scarlett R., a participant in Leading the Effective Middle School, said her cohort left knowing they now had their own “people” to help them through the coming school year. Another new lower school leader wrote that the relationships she built were ones she expected to lean on throughout her first year and beyond.
That community forms in the workshop room, but it deepens in the spaces around it—over shared meals, informal conversations, morning hikes, and time exploring the host city. The result is a rigorous learning environment without feeling impersonal and professionally serious without losing joy.
What attendees felt is reflected in the data.
Numbers alone cannot capture the moment someone sees her role differently, gains the confidence to lead a difficult conversation, or realizes that she no longer has to solve every problem alone. But they do affirm a pattern: people left Summer Institute believing the week had delivered on its promise — and was worth the investment.
When the week ends, the impact is designed to continue.
The most meaningful professional learning does not end with a certificate or a full notebook. It changes what happens next.
It shows up when a new administrator enters the year with a 100-day plan instead of a blank page. When an admissions leader makes better use of data. When a department chair can lead a stronger meeting. When an advancement professional approaches a donor relationship with greater confidence. When a school leader has a trusted peer to call before making a consequential decision.
That’s why Summer Institute is more than a collection of workshops. It is an immersive week in which independent school professionals can step away from the pace of campus life, think deeply about their work, practice what leadership will require of them, and return ready to create meaningful change.
Perhaps the simplest summary came from an attendee as she left on the final day. After working in eight schools across two countries, she described Summer Institute as “the best week of my entire career.”
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