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Baruti K. Kafele    

Milken National Educator & Best-Selling Author

A highly-regarded urban educator in New Jersey for over twenty years, Principal Baruti Kafele distinguished himself as a master teacher and a transformational school leader. As an elementary school teacher in East Orange, NJ, he was selected as the East Orange School District and Essex County Public Schools Teacher of the Year and New Jersey State Teacher of the Year finalist.

As a middle and high school principal, Principal Kafele emerged as a turnaround school leader which included the turnaround of "The Mighty" Newark Tech, that went from a low-performing school in need of improvement to national recognition, including U.S. News and World Report Magazine recognizing it three times as one of America's best high schools. This culminated in Principal Kafele receiving the coveted Milken Educator Award for his leadership.

One of the most sought-after school leadership and classroom equity presenters in America, Principal Kafele is impacting America’s schools. For over 35 years, he has delivered more than 3000 conference and program keynotes, professional development workshops, parenting seminars and student assemblies. In addition to writing several professional articles for popular education journals, he has authored thirteen books, including seven ASCD best sellers. His next book, "What Is My Value INSTRUCTIONALLY to the Teachers I Supervise" will be released on December 16, 2024.

Principal Kafele is the creator and host of the popular AP & New Principals Academy, streamed live every Saturday morning on his AP & New Principals Academy YouTube channel at 10:55 ET. He is the recipient of over 150 educational, professional and community awards which include the prestigious Milken Educator Award, the National Alliance of Black School Educators Hall of Fame Award, the East Orange, NJ Hall of Fame Award, recognition as one of the World’s Top 30 Education Professionals for five consecutive years (2020 – 2024) by Global Gurus Top 30, and the City of Dickinson, Texas proclaiming February 8, 1998 as Baruti Kafele Day.

Speech Topics


What Is My Value INSTRUCTIONALLY to the Teachers I Supervise?

In this one or two full days workshop (or keynote address), Principal Kafele contends emphatically that, “The primary purpose of the supervision of teachers is student achievement and their continued improvement of instruction!” Due to the complexities of school leadership, it is easy to be so inundated by the non-instructional aspects of the work that the instructional side of the leadership inclusive of instructional coaching suffers. When the instructional side suffers, it adversely impacts the entire school academically. To that end, in this high-engagement, self-reflective workshop (or keynote address), Principal Kafele will provide principals and assistant principals with strategies toward maintaining a focus on the instructional side of their leadership toward increasing the probability that teacher pedagogy will improve significantly and student achievement will soar. Attention will also be given to creating a school-wide culture of instructional leadership that is conducive to sustaining instructional leadership engagement and effectiveness over the course of an entire school year.

Topics covered: 1 & 2 (below) are built into the presentation. Either the client or Principal Kafele determine the remaining topics to be covered based upon need and length of time of presentation.

  1. Instructional Leadership Must Be at Your Core: Everything Else Is Secondary (What is instructional leadership and what does it mean to my practice as a school leader?)

  2. Instructional Leadership and Student Achievement Go "Hand in Glove" (Do I understand that my main priority is student achievement and the continued improvement of instruction?)

  3. Instructional Leadership Is Where the "Rubber Meets the Road" (Would I consider the instructional aspect of my leadership to be my primary focus as a leader? What is the evidence?)

  4. Instructional Leadership and Your Instructional Self-Assessment (What does instructional leadership look like for me during the normal course of a day?)

  5. Instructional Leadership and Your Expectations of Excellence (Do I have a philosophy, beliefs, opinions and ideas about how children learn based upon my own research, reading and experiences?)

  6. Instructional Leadership and the Pre- & Post Observation Conference (What is the significance of the pre- and post-observation conference to my leadership instructionally, inclusive of the analysis of data?)

  7. Instructional Leadership and Knowing Excellent Pedagogy (What do I know about excellent pedagogy beyond who I was as a classroom teacher?)

  8. Instructional Leadership and Maximizing Your Leadership Team (What is the role of my administrative leadership team toward establishing a culture of instructional leadership?)

  9. Instructional Leadership and Maximizing Your Instructional Coaches (How am I utilizing my instructional coaches and what measures have I put in place for them to be optimally successful?)

  10. Instructional Leadership and Your Teachers' Perceptions of Who You Are as Instructional Coach (How do the teachers that I supervise perceive me as an Instructional leader?)

Maximizing Your Administrative Leadership Team Toward Creating a Culture of Instructional Leadership

As significant as instructional leadership is to the academic progress of a school, depending upon the prevailing culture of the school, instructionally leadership can prove quite challenging to engage in consistently for school leaders. In this session, Principal Kafele will engage participants in a discussion on the role of the administrative leadership team toward the development of a sustained culture of instructional leadership throughout the school. Potential subtopics included:

• Does my leadership team function as a team in the truest sense of the word or are we simply a collection of individuals?

• Is my leadership team comprised of competing priorities or is it understood that student achievement and the continued improvement of instruction is our main priority after student safety?

• Do my leadership team members possess the skillsets to be proficient instructional leaders?

• As a leadership team, are we continually collaborating on what effective pedagogy looks like?

• What is the mission of my school and is it known and embraced by my leadership team and the entire school community?

• What is the vision of my school and is it known and embraced by my leadership team and the entire school community?

• What are the academic goals and objectives of my school and are they known and embraced by my leadership team and the entire school community?

• To what extent does my leadership team engage in ongoing school-level planning?

• What programs and activities does my leadership team have in place that help to deter undesirable student behaviors?

• In what ways does my leadership team keep parents and key members of the community engaged in our work?"

Is My School a Better School BECAUSE I Lead It?

Based on Principal Kafele’s best-selling book, Is My School a Better School BECAUSE I Lead It?, Principal Kafele will challenge each principal and assistant principal to examine their own leadership identity, presence, impact, mission, purpose, vision and value as the leaders of their schools, which will include discussions on whether or not they have in fact defined these leadership attributes within themselves. The entire workshop is highly engaging and interactive and the keynote is high-energy. It promises to inspire principals and assistant principals to think deeply and critically about their roles as leaders of their schools and whether or not their schools are better schools because they are the leaders of them. As Principal Kafele states in his opening, “My intent is to create discomfort, tension and uneasiness in the room. Inspiration lasts for a few hours. Discomfort, tension and uneasiness endure until they are corrected.”

Just One Educator Can Completely Shift the Trajectory of a Child

In this empowering keynote address, Principal Kafele will state emphatically to educators at all levels that each of them possess the power toward completely shifting the trajectory of a child. He will encourage them to reflect upon their initial “why” for entering the world of education and remind them of the significance their “why” holds toward student success throughout the course of each and every day, while ultimately taking children to heights previously unimagined. Principal Kafele’s message will remind each participant of their greatness as practitioners despite the challenges, obstacles, pressures and demands of teaching, leading and counseling in the midst of a global pandemic.

EQUITY...The Best Friend of Every Student in Your Building!

It is impossible for each student to perform optimally when they are forced to learn in inequitable learning environments. This session will show school leaders how to "lead for equity" toward ensuring that each of their learners is afforded equitable learning opportunities in their classrooms. With the achievement gap continuing to be the greatest challenge for educational leaders nationally, this session makes the argument that there will never be any significant closure to the achievement gap as long as equitable practices fail to be central components of the leadership of the building, and teaching and learning in the classroom. Equity must, therefore, be the "best friend" of each of the students in the building.

Diversity, Equity & Inclusion and Effective School Leadership

One of the current hot topics in education is "Diversity, Equity & Inclusion." This highly engaging, interactive, self-reflective workshop or keynote address focuses on school leadership relative to issues of diversity, equity & inclusion in their schools. It challenges school leaders to look within themselves relative to how they see, treat and relate with their staffs and students in these areas. It challenges school leaders to confront whatever biases they may bring to their own leadership practices which may be implicit or explicit. It argues that high-performance is an impossibility in school learning environments where the recognition of diversity coupled with equitable and inclusionary practices fail to exist. Principal Kafele will share strategies toward creating and sustaining equity and inclusion in a diverse student learning environment which will be inclusive of important conversations around race and cultural competence.

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It's Not Enough to "DO EQUITY"...You Must "BE EQUITY"

THE topic in education today is the topic of EQUITY. At its core, equity means, "meeting youngsters where they are, as they are." Principal Kafele argues that this requires a teacher who possess an “EQUITY MINDSET.” He asserts that if equity is all about meeting the individual needs of all of the learners in the classroom, “equity can’t solely be something THAT YOU DO.” He states emphatically that “equity must additionally be WHO YOU ARE.”

As a keynote address, Principal Kafele will deliver an inspiring and empowering message centered around developing an "equity mindset" toward ensuring the academic, social, and emotional growth and development of all the learners in the classroom.

As a half or full day workshop (or series of workshops), Principal Kafele will assist the client with selecting the most appropriate of the following six strands for your school or district based upon need and length of session(s) as follows:

  1. Equity and the Reality of My Classroom One of the most important questions one can ask oneself regarding equity is, "What is equity and does equity abound in my classroom?" It's an important consideration for each and every classroom teacher. In this empowering, highly engaging strand, Principal Kafele will lead a discussion on what equity is and what it looks like, sounds like and feels like when implemented with fidelity in the classroom.

II. Equity or Equality? What's the Difference? In this empowering, highly engaging strand, Principal Kafele breaks down the difference between an “equity mindset teacher” and an “equality mindset teacher” while simultaneous comparing and contrasting an “equity mindset classroom” from an “equality mindset classroom.”

III. Equity and the Individuality of the Learners In this empowering, highly engaging strand, Principal Kafele makes the case that the individuality of each student matters. He will provide attendees with strategies toward ensuring that student individuality, student cultural identity and student “voice” play prominent roles within their schools and classrooms.

IV. Equity and Being a Culturally Responsive Practitioner In this empowering, highly engaging strand, Principal Kafele will provide attendees with strategies toward being culturally-responsive practitioners with a particular emphasis being placed on what students “see, hear, feel and experience” daily in their classrooms. He will assist attendees toward developing the necessary cultural competence toward engaging productively with diverse learners.

  1. Equity and Culturally-Relevant Pedagogy In this empowering, highly engaging strand, Principal Kafele will discuss the significance of culturally-relevant teaching and learning in a diverse student learning environment. He will make the case that toward making learning fun, stimulating and engaging, it must be relatable where students are afforded the opportunity of “seeing themselves” in the learning toward increasing the probability that they will see the relevance of what is being taught toward their lives.

VI. Equity and Me In this empowering, highly engaging strand, Principal Kafele will focus on the actions of the teacher in areas including but not limited to, “keeping the playing field level,” confronting implicit biases that may exist, and eradicating disproportionality. This session is all about ensuring that attendees always view their students and their practice through an “equity lens.”

Closing the Attitude Gap

The discussion on gaps in student achievement continue to be one of the most important discussions in education today; particularly as it relates to the underachievement of children of color. Equally challenging for educators is the continued lack of student motivation, undesirable student behaviors and the overall underachievement of at-risk student populations across racial and ethnic lines. In this highly engaging, thought-provoking workshop, Principal Kafele will assert that the greatest difficulty to closing the achievement gap is the overwhelming assumption that the achievement gap is in fact, the problem. He says that the achievement gap is a direct consequence of the failure to adequately address what he coined, the Attitude Gap (the gap between those students who have the will to achieve excellence and those who do not) that continues to persist in American classrooms. He will share with teachers how to close the Attitude Gap in their classrooms through a classroom equity framework comprised of the following five strands: Environment for Learning, Attitude toward Students, Relationship with Students, Compassion for Students and Relevance in Instruction.

3 Equity Nonnegotiables: Student Individuality, Student Cultural Identity, Student "Voice"

For the past ten years, the whole idea of equity in the classroom has evolved to unimaginable proportions…which is a good thing. One of the challenges however is the interpretation of what equity in the classroom actually is. There are a ton of interpretations and definitions out there. Rooted in Principal Kafele’s 34 years in education, he decided in 2020 to write The Equity & Social Justice Education 50 toward lending his voice to the discussion of what equity is and what it is not in America’s classrooms. Principal Kafele contends that any discussion, training, writing etc. on equity must contain, at a minimum, his “Three Equity Nonnegotiables” which are:

Student Individuality - Visible or Invisible? What is it about my role as an “Equity-Mindset Teacher” that the individuality of EACH of my learners (academically, socially and emotionally) is acknowledged, appreciated, respected and visible?

Student Cultural Identity - Accentuated or Denied? What is it about my role as an “Equity-Mindset Teacher” that the cultural / racial identity of EACH of my learners is acknowledged, appreciated, respected and accentuated?

Student “Voice” - Distinct or Obscure? What is it about my role as an “Equity-Mindset Teacher” that the “voice” of EACH of my learners is acknowledged, appreciated, respected and distinct?

In this high-energy keynote address or highly-engaging workshop, Principal Kafele will make the case that if true equity is to occur for EACH of the learners in the classroom, student individuality, student cultural identity and student “voice” matter exponentially.

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