1. Identify a challenge/ opportunity
Describe your challenge project, as you currently understand it and please indicate how it might improve instruction, student learning, school climate, etc.  Frame it as a question about the issue, opportunity, or problem that you want to address. (If your project has changed since the summer, please describe how and why it has changed.)

Please include any relevant data that prompted you to take on this challenge. This data may also be used to benchmark, set milestones and goals and track your progress.

2. Initial conditions (November 7 (study session #1))
Describe your school in a way that will help us understand why you decided to undertake this particular challenge.

To build a sense of context, please provide a brief profile of your school which may include:

• School mission,
• Size, location & surroundings
• Demographics (race/ethnicity, socioeconomic status of students),
• Special features of the school culture,
• Image in the neighborhood and with respect to other schools,
• Special curricular focus,
• Special accomplishments and records of achievement
• Characteristics of teaching staff or other distinctive features of your school.

Benchmark data
Then, provide more specific benchmark data and information that directly pertain to your challenge project. This might include:

• Assessment data related to your challenge (such as grade-level performance on math or literacy assessments, achievement of ELL students, etc.),
• A component of your Quality Review, Progress Report or Principal Performance Review that you would like to expand or improve,

3. Diagnosis/Deeper Understanding (December 13 (study session #2))
Describe the ways you engaged your faculty and staff in learning more so that you could address the challenge effectively. How did you learn, and how did you engage others in learning, through:

• Reading books, journal articles, online resources
• Visits to other schools, consultations with expert practitioners, Cahn study sessions
• Collecting information in your own school by talking with others, observing activities, looking at student work products, examining data, or administering surveys or questionnaires?

Were you able to develop a deeper understanding of your challenge? What did you learn about the presenting characteristics and underlying factors related to your challenge? What specific details did you learn most about, and what "big ideas" did you glean from your efforts? How did your "lessons learned" influence the action plan you developed?

4. Reframe: Develop and implement a new approach (February 9 (study session #3))
Please describe how you have sought to address your challenge in the short-term and longer-term. This portion of the action inquiry cycle focuses on taking specific actions, followed by a review of the outcomes and further adjustments to the plan, and then another round of action.

What specific steps have you taken this year to address your challenge? Please provide a bulleted list, timeline, and/or charts, showing the progression of action steps and who did what.

5. Outcomes, monitoring, and planning (March 29 (study session #4))
What were the outcomes of your actions? Did your actions have an impact on the school, the teachers, the students, etc.? What evidence can you provide to document and demonstrate the impact?

Please describe the plans you have made for following through over the summer and in the next academic year. What do you need to do to continue to move toward success and who do you need to involve? Again, provide bulleted lists, timelines, and charts showing actions, intended outcomes and responsibilities.

6. Reflections on Leadership and School Development(Fellow and Ally should complete)(May 14 (study session #5))
How did you perceptions and understanding of your challenge change, if at all? If they did change, to what extent did any of the program's content (i.e., Ways of Knowing, concept mapping, Action Learning Conversations, NBI) help you to see things differently?

Describe the ways your leadership has changed as a result of your Cahn Fellowship, including all of the learning experiences, interactions with mentors, Ally, and peers, and the challenge project.

Describe the ways in which your Ally's leadership capacities were developed this year. What supports and challenges did you provide to further develop their leadership?