Elisa B. MacDonald
Skillful Intentional Team Leadership
LEAD teams with intention.
GROW leaders' mindset and skills.
IMPACT teaching and learning.
Elisa MacDonald In the News:
Elisa MacDonald's work is referenced in numerous books such as:
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The PLC+ Playbook by Doug Fisher and Nancy Frey
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50 Strategies for Activating Your PLC+ by Doug Fisher and Nancy Frey and James Marshall.
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Focus on Teaching by Jim Knight.
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The Teacher Team Leader Handbook by Chad Dumas.
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Elisa MacDonald's work is referenced in numerous articles. Here are a few standouts:
(May 1, 2026) Fig City News. "Beyond spreadsheets and budget books: Brown Middle School Principal discusses student results"
By Adam Bernstein on June 24, 2025
FCN: How do educator “Teams” work at Brown Middle School?
(Principal Kim Lysaght) KL: We have two different types of teacher collaborative teams. One is Grade Level Departments (GLDs) who all teach the same subject, at the same grade level. They meet weekly to plan curriculum, share best ideas, bring their respective strengths, and create common lessons and assessments for students. An example is the Global Goals event that was coordinated by the three 6th grade social studies teachers. The GLDs make sure we hit all of the marks that are required for students as they go through their grade levels. The GLD structure has been around for a long time, since I was teaching, maybe 20 years ago now!
The other structure is the multi-subject team that teaches a group of about 85-90 students all year, comprised of a math, science, social science, and English Language Arts teacher. They also meet weekly, along with a counselor, administrator, and a special educator. The special educator could be part of a citywide program, or is one of Brown’s general special education teachers and is the case manager for students with IEPs on that team.
FCN: How is that structure evolving?
KL: This year, each team has a team leader, and utilizes what we call a Function Impact Matrix (attributed to Elisa McDonald), which looks at both the functionality of the team as well as its impact on student results. They ask questions like how would you facilitate a situation where X happens or Y happens. Since [Superintendent Nolin] began, we’ve implemented several student assessments such as Star Math. We’ve been using iReady for reading for a number of years. The teams also look at social-emotional learning (SEL) data. We have a platform that’s called Sown To Grow, where our students weekly will enter data on a five-point scale about how they’re feeling on Friday.
The team looks at data for those students they share, and if there’s a student that we’re concerned about, we all can take a look at their larger picture, not just an anecdote about what happened in their last class. The data may tell us we’ve got a lot of kids who need some reinforcement on, for example, fractions. So then the math teachers can work with their teammates to reserve time with those students during their extension block.
Similarly, a guidance counselor can bring SEL data to the table and ask the teachers what they’re seeing in class. Do we need to reach out to a family if there’s a pattern of feeling down? It’s looking at the whole child as a team. We’ll continue that work next year in helping facilitate the team leaders making those meetings as impactful as possible.
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(August 26, 2025) Learning Forward. Leading, Learning and Collaborating with Trish Hinze.
"K: What’s inspiring you to learn right now?
T: I’m excited to share the book Intentional Moves: How Skillful Team Leaders Impact Learning by Elisa MacDonald. Elisa’s focus is not only team functionality, which is absolutely important, but her work delves deeper to focus on impact. If we are going to expend the time and energy to work as collaborative teams, we need to ensure our work impacts learning, both adult and student learning. The book focuses on 10 Primary Intentions with correlating leader moves. The format of the book is a user-friendly, color-coded structure that guides teams to easy-to-use tools, and she provides recommendations for how and when to use these resources. It frames the work of a skillful team leader starting with building a collaborative team culture and then promotes other critical moves such as the intentional use of data. One of my favorite intentions is implementing new learning. MacDonald provides tools to help team leaders navigate how we learn and then implement changes in small, manageable increments over time and even addresses dealing with resistance to change and conflict that are inevitable when we work in teams. These are the areas where teams falter, without guidance and proven resources. It’s quickly becoming one of my favorites!"
https://www.learningforwardtexas.org/post/leading-learning-and-collaborating-with-trish-hinze
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(May 6, 2024) Leaders Coaching Leaders Podcast with Peter DeWitt. "How to Lead a Culture of Learning and Vulnerability."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvh-fjwxFRw
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(Oct. 23, 2023) Center for Leadership and Educational Equity (CLEE). "What are we reading?"
"Last week I had the opportunity to observe our Principal Residency Network (PRN)’s instructional rounds. We rotated through two schools where we listened to their leadership teams present their school-wide goals, observed their progress through classroom walkthroughs, and reflected on what we observed through the Atlas Protocol. What struck me the most was when we listened to Danira Ortiz, the Principal, Head of School at Nuestro Mundo Public Charter school, reflect on her experience receiving feedback from our PRN leaders. She shared how grateful she was for the feedback, and clarified why she chose to open her doors in September as opposed to June. She wanted the critical feedback at the beginning of the school so that her team could apply it to their practice and get closer to their goals.
I loved hearing Danira reflect on the intention because it really modeled the mindsets underlying Elisa MacDonald’s “When Nice Won’t Suffice.” We need more leaders who are willing to “foster vulnerability-based trust” in order to get the results we need for all students. Too often, educators lose out on “rigorous collaborative discourse” when we prioritize protecting people’s feelings of comfort over challenging our thinking, beliefs, assumptions, and practice. This can happen in so many ways but for our leaders to interrupt these patterns of “nice,” MacDonald calls on educator leaders to recognize the signs, respond proactively as well as in the moment, and follow up."
Written by: Jenny Li, CLEE Continuous Improvement Facilitator and Coach
To address the “culture of nice” that keeps people in the comfort zone, leaders must create a safe environment that honors critical feedback, while upholding the goal of collaborative discourse for improving student outcomes. If leaders continue to prioritize the culture of nice, they run the risk of undermining protocols for feedback and encouraging gossip. Let’s face it, educators crave honest discourse, even if they might seem uncomfortable. At CLEE, we push our participants to move themselves into the risk zone, where they can challenge themselves and grow as leaders for equity. As education leaders, keeping our learners and communities at the center of our work means we simply can’t afford to be nice rather than give productive feedback.
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(January 24, 2014) She Shines On. She gives. Teach Plus.
(July 24, 2013) Professional Learning: The Secrets of Skillful Team Leaders - (Part 1). Alabama Best Practices Center.
https://aplusala.org/best-practices-center/2013/07/24/secrets-of-skillful-team-leaders/
(July 29, 2013) Avoiding a Scapegoat Culture in Your School (Part 2). Alabama Best Practices Center.
https://aplusala.org/best-practices-center/2013/07/29/part-2-avoiding-a-scapegoat/
(Nov. 29, 2013) Middleweb. "The Skillful Team Leader: Overcoming Hurdles to Professional Learning"
https://www.middleweb.com/11325/leaping-hurdles-team-leadership/