School Leadership

As a leader in education, you know you have an important job, but at times it can be a very demanding and difficult job. Continue reading about our 11 Educational Leadership Secrets to help ease the burden of your multi-faceted position.

1. Forever Learning- As a member of the educational field, and more specifically, someone whose students, teachers, and colleagues look to for advice, you should model that you are always trying to improve. Go out and complete a continuing education course based on current research, bring it back to your team, and let the growth of your teachers and students flourish.
2. Positive School Culture- With everything that is happening in the world, it is important to portray and embody positivity in your educational leadership role. Professors at Northwestern University support the idea of an “ecosystem of experiences.” There is a reason that “school culture” has become a hot topic, and it is because if a positive environment is built in our schools, school leaders, teachers, students, parents, and even the community will be able to reap the benefits of the many positive experiences that happen in school.
3. Attainable Expectations- We have all had the educational leader who says, “this is what we are doing” but provides no guidance. This leads to confusion and frustration among everyone in the school. Instead, set clear goals with soft and hard deadlines for both individuals and groups within your school. Thomas Hoerr, the author of Principal Connections/Four Tips on Leading Adults, says clear expectations are a must because it allows everyone to be on the same page. Being a united team will allow you and your staff to complete goals in a more timely and efficient manner.
4. Put Your Foot Down- To go along with #3, there are always going to be people who don’t agree on any given policy or reform . In the education world, this tends to be because many teachers and staff are very passionate about what they think education should look like. If you feel strongly about a new grading policy or style of pedagogy, implement it! Put a clear plan into place, assign your staff roles, and have proper feedback mechanisms put in place. Thomas Hoerr put it best, “Particularly on important issues, if everyone is happy, chances are we aren’t doing our job.”
5. Listen to Teachers… and Students!- Now, this may seem like a direct opposition to #4, but indeed it is not. Teachers need guidance, but also want the chance to teach you, their principal! You can see this in the direct quotes from teachers in this “Dear School Leaders” article. When you actively listen to teachers and their positive ideas for school improvement, you might be surprised by what you learn! So approach your teachers with the idea that you want to hear positive discussions of ways to improve your school or community, and to leave the negative Nancy attitudes at the front doors.
6. Feedback, Feedback, Feedback- Feedback is arguably one of the most crucial components of education as a whole. Students need both positive feedback and critical criticism to truly complete the learning process, and the same is true for everyone in an educational environment. Be sure to provide feedback to your teachers on what they can improve upon, but also what they are doing well! Encourage your staff members to visit the classrooms of those teachers who have gone above and beyond the call of duty. Never underestimate the power of verbal or written encouragement to a teacher, most of the time, it is all they need to keep growing as an educator!
7. Open Door Policy- Just as you expect your staff to be open to your opinions about their work, you too need to be open to constructive criticism. In 2014, the website Cult of Pedagogy ran a survey of teachers where one of their findings was that “70 percent [of teachers] said they would not feel comfortable going to their principals with a concern about something the administrator had done.” This is an issue, because communication is a two-way street. All educational leaders can probably agree, that if they have done something wrong, they would want to know and correct the issue. This problem can easily be solved by using a survey where teachers can provide honest feedback, without fear of repercussions. You can find example feedback questions and prompts on the “Principals: Are you brave enough to ask for staff feedback” article on the Cult of Pedagogy website.
8. Communication is Key- One could argue that #7 could be avoidable with one simple step: clear and consistent communication. In today’s technological world, there is no excuse for lack of communication. A simple solution could be sending out weekly emails listing out the important events within the school and community. Or create a “Teacher of the Week” awards program so that teachers, administrators, and students can nominate someone who is creating a positive impact on your school. Most importantly of all, if there is a problem, be sure to communicate with the person(s) involved and provide clear expectations of how you want the problem solved.
9. It’s Always For the Students- Remember why you got into this field? Most likely, it was for those students who need you most. Even though you are no longer a teacher who sees the same students every day, you can still get to know each kid on a personal level. When they know that all of the adults in their school are there to support them, their learning experience will be that much more meaningful.
10. Check-In On Yourself- There is a lot to do. You have checklists galore, you want your staff to try this new platform, you need to send out all of those positive emails and notes, and overall you are swamped. Make sure you take a step back and allow yourself to reflect on how you are doing professionally. Are you setting and making progress towards the goals you set? Are you taking the time to do what you think is most important while being an educational leader? If not, do it! You got into this position for a reason, make sure you are being true to your inner educator!
11. It’s Okay, You Aren’t a SuperHero- Along with #10, guess what, you can’t do it all! And that is okay! You wear many hats in one day, and you are doing your best. On the days where all you can think about is criticism and negativity do as Tom Vander Ark says, “Take care of your family” and yourself because if you are burnt out, it will show. When you put your needs first, it will allow you to better serve all of those that matter most.

Here is to hoping you read about a tip or trick that you can take back to your school to make your year as an educational leader run a little smoother, while also benefiting everyone around you!

 

This morning I had a talk with a good friend about their school year and their maturation as a teacher. They shared with me that even though they felt like their pedagogical and classroom management skills were at an all-time high, their principal did not share the same enthusiasm. As a matter of fact, in many ways, the principal believed that my friends’ skills had regressed over the last two years.

What bothered my friend is that without her even asking, her colleagues routinely commented on her growth as a teacher, and she had even been named the teacher of the year for her school district. Where was this discrepancy coming from? Did her principal have some type of vendetta against her or were here teaching skills regressing? Unfortunately, this happens all too often in the field of K-12 education.

What does teacher observation currently look like?

Each year, teachers are observed informally and formally by their principals. Informal observations are impromptu and can be done at any time. Formal observations are planned and have a pre and post observation component.

What I mean by this is that before a formal observation, the teacher and principal sit down and discuss the date and time of the observation, what lesson the teachers will teach, and the criteria upon which teacher will be judged. This is commonly known as a pre-observation conference.

After the formal observation, the teacher and principal sit down for what is known as the post-observation conference. During this time, they discuss the observation, and the principal goes through the teachers assessed performance, letting them know the things that they did well and the things that need improvement. To help facilitate teacher growth, the principal and the teacher work together to develop an improvement plan.

This plan will help the teacher reach their full potential as an educator and correct any pedagogical deficiencies. The plan is then enacted, and informal observations and coaching sessions are used to accelerate growth. In some instances, the principal will take a model lesson to the teacher’s students to demonstrate the pedagogical skills that need improvement.

How can we make the teacher observation process better?

To make the teacher observation process better, all we have to do is make it multifactorial. What do I mean by this? Instead of just being observed by one administrator, maybe teachers should be observed by several people. Of course, their building principal should be one of the observers, and also the district should have its own squadron of observers. Since the districts observers do not work with the teacher on a day to day basis or hold a supervisory position, their observations can be seen as neutral.

Both the principal and the district observers would be trained to use the same observational scale. The pre-observation conference would include the three observers (the principal and two district observers) and the teacher, and subsequently, the observations would be carried out. In cases of widely divergent ratings, the principal and district observers could work together to reconcile the differences in their scores, before facilitating a post-observation conference with the teacher. The end result should theoretically be teacher observational scores that have increased validity and increase teacher quality and efficacy.

What do you think of my proposed changes to the teacher observation process?

How do you lead educators, students and administrators in today’s challenging environment? Does your leadership style help people to grow and become more autonomous?

Of all the different leadership styles, the servant leader is the one that is most likely to achieve this goal. Let’s take a deeper look at this remarkable leadership style.

As the term implies, a servant leader leads by serving others. Servant leaders place the interests and needs of their followers ahead of their own self-interests and needs. These leaders place a high value on the development of their team, work to build a community where members share power.

Professor of human resource management at Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University, Dr. Dirk van DierenDonck, says his research has found that the best leaders have six key servant leadership characteristics:

Empowering and developing people

This is about allowing everybody to take responsibility for their own actions. The leader recognizes the abilities and talents of those he leads and encourages them to run with it. The idea is to encourage the personal growth of everyone in the team.

Humility

With this basic attitude, the leader acknowledges that he/she doesn’t know everything, that employees also have valuable knowledge and experience to contribute.

According to Dr. Robert Hogan, founder and president of Hogan Assessments, research shows that humility predicts effective leadership. Humility is associated with minimizing status differences, listening to subordinates, soliciting input, admitting mistakes and being willing to change course when a plan seems not to work.

Authenticity

People trust authenticity and they instinctively reject fake behavior. A leader will be seen as authentic if he acts with integrity, follows through on undertakings, and shows consistency in his behavior. The leader must show that she is being true to herself and must encourage her followers to be true to themselves as well.

Interpersonal acceptance

A great leader has the ability to accept others and relate to their feelings and what motivates them. This is also a leadership culture in which empathy and forgiveness are practiced as it is understood that people can and do make mistakes. In spite of that, their behavior must not prevent them from being developed. By accepting everyone in the school, from the janitor, to every teacher and student for their unique perspectives, the leader lets each individual feel that they matter.

Providing direction

This is what leadership is about – providing direction. Everyone should know what is expected from them, what their particular goals are. Ideally, the servant leader will succeed in creating the kind of environment where participation is experienced as meaningful.

Dierendonck explains it like this: “To provide direction, the servant leader must make work dynamic and have it tailored to the abilities and needs of employees.”

Stewardship

Dierendonck sees stewardship as the willingness to take responsibility for the larger institution and to focus on service instead of control and self-interest. A servant leader sets an example for others to follow, and model how to act in the common interest.

This style of leadership is not easy. Those who have tried it, say it’s a difficult leadership style to follow, but it’s one that can transform an institution from the inside-out

Helen Keller said, “Alone we can do so little; together, we can do so much.” This truth certainly applies to the critical connection of our schools to our communities. Yes, the funding comes from federal and state resources, but the local community should be the real sustenance of learning experiences.

Because a community of people live in the same area and have common interests, there should be an understanding that they will influence each other’s lives in some way. And, what better way to expose students to real life experiences than to form partnerships with businesses, volunteer organizations, retirement homes, and churches to bring added resources and accountability to schools.

XQ America proposes Super Schools where educators collaborate with small business owners, large corporations, and healthcare providers to enable students to study in a multitude of scenarios. Because learning is authentic, and not just classroom-based, students are able to watch and assist business leaders as they work through interactions and negotiations intended to bring success to the company. XQ America espouses 4 key strategies to connect schools with the community:

By repurposing vacant buildings in the community into schools (in the same manner as a mixed-use downtown area), students are then able to interact on a regular basis with surrounding businesses, museums, and healthcare institutions. In this way, students get real-life experiences while the community has a true stake in the success of the school.

Schools should develop partnerships with community partners to accomplish projects that have real use to the community. They “want to broker access to opportunity and resources to change privileged knowledge to common”

Early access to internships helps local businesses identify talented students who could bring value to these companies while exposing the students to potential future employment and career opportunities.

Provide early access to higher education through partnering with colleges and universities nearby for dual credit courses.

Within our schools are students with physical needs, and the schools themselves cannot meet all of these alone. Community partnerships should not only focus on educational opportunities, but also on aiding families with physical needs. Connecting families with mental health services, dental and medical services, and food banks is another critical area. Some concrete ideas for connections aside from mentoring and internships are:

• Afterschool homework help and enrichment activities
• Neighborhood involvement day with activities such as planting flowers in the yards of elderly neighbors, or planning and maintaining a community garden.
• Enlist retired teachers and older people to be reading and lunch buddies for students.
• Participate in multicultural events and arts activities.

The New Hampshire Department of Education reports that “these partnerships result in sharing and maximizing resources. And they help children and youth develop healthy behaviors and promote healthy families”.  And the Michigan State Government found that “when families, schools, and community institutions (e.g., local businesses, community colleges, and health agencies) collectively agree upon their goals and decide how to reach them, everyone benefits.” Collaborating with the surrounding community can only strengthen the students and their families while building strong relationships with businesses, healthcare providers, and volunteer groups.

To become an effective school leader, you must help all your staff members succeed. Let’s discuss a school management model that will help you accomplish that. Invitational leadership is a school management model that aims to “invite” all interested stakeholders to succeed. The leadership model utilizes “invitations” as messages communicated to people, which inform them that they are valued, able, responsible, and worthwhile.

The messages are sometimes transmitted by interpersonal action but are mostly disseminated through the institution’s policies, programs, practices, and physical environments. Invitational leadership is based upon four basic assumptions, which exemplify the characteristics of invitational leaders. These assumptions are optimism, respect, trust, and intentionality. Lets briefly discuss these assumptions:

• Optimism – The belief that people have untapped potential for growth and development.
• Respect – The recognition that every person is an individual of worth.
• Trust – The possession of confidence in the abilities, integrity, and responsibilities of ourselves and others.
• Intention – A decision to purposely act in a certain way to achieve and carry out a set goal.

Invitational leadership is a tough skill to master, so let’s look a scenario that illustrates how it operates in an actual school environment.

Scenario: Angela Murray, an art teacher at Blue Ridge Elementary, came to Principal Frank Anderson one day with a problem. While using a shared computer in the staff room, she had discovered an email exchange between two other teachers that made snarky comments about her off-putting mannerisms and even the way she dressed. Ms. Murray was hurt. However, even though she’d discovered the emails by accident, she didn’t feel comfortable confronting the teachers because of privacy issues.

Principal Anderson sympathized with Ms. Murray’s problem, but he also realized that she was not wholly blameless. The art teacher’s social skills were somewhat lacking, and her creative outfits were causing merriment among students and teachers alike. She was a relatively new teacher, and a few small changes, he thought, might make her job easier.

Principal Anderson had a dilemma. Should he just deal with Ms. Murray, and ignore the email exchange, which was certainly private? Or should he bring in the other teachers and lecture them on respect? Which direction would create the best future for the school?

In the scenario, Principal Anderson is faced with a situation in which trust has been breached, and there is a lack of open communication among the parties. The invitational model would suggest that he find a way to bring Ms. Murray and the gossiping teachers together in a non-threatening environment, to enable all sides of the conversation to be heard. As the vignette illustrates, invitational leadership has a highly personal and ethical character, which is included within its modular constructs.

Let’s look at the four assumptions (optimism, respect, trust, and intentionality) as they relate to the vignette. If Principal Anderson was cynical, he might dismiss Ms. Murray as a hopeless case, and laugh along with the other teachers. However, the invitational model shifts the focus from negative to positive.

Using the four assumptions (optimism, respect, trust, and intentionality), Principal Anderson would understand that Ms. Murray was still a work in progress, and he would believe in her potential. He would realize that her creativity and quirkiness were, if tapped appropriately, assets rather than liabilities, and would attempt to transmit that notion to the other teachers. He would work with Ms. Murray, helping her hone goals that would make her a better teacher.

As principal, you are expected to be one of, if not the best teacher in the building. You can’t be an effective principal if you were never an effective teacher. It’s like trying to fit a square peg in a round hole. It just won’t work. As the instructional leader, you must spend at least 20 percent of your time observing teachers, evaluating them, and helping them to grow.

You can’t do this unless you know what good teaching looks like, and as I have already established, this comes with experience. If you are up for the challenge, you will see your teachers blossom under your tutelage and instructional leadership. If you are not, then you will see your students suffer, all because you wanted to escape the rigors of the classroom and become a principal. Just calling a spade a spade.

Now let’s practice your ability to give teachers corrective feedback. In the scenario below, Principal Cho must confront Mr. Raffles about his lack of emotional intelligence. What are three constructive things she could say that would allow him to connect more solidly with his students? Reflect on your answer and use your thoughts to inform your practice.

Scenario: Jeremy Raffles was a physics and chemistry teacher at Elton Park High School. He had graduated with top honors from one of the most prestigious universities in the country, and the principal, Laura Cho, felt honored that he had chosen to teach at Elton. In his first two years, he’d transformed the science lab, bringing in new equipment and creating elaborate experiments, and he dazzled the staff with his impromptu lectures on new techniques in teaching chemistry.

Ms. Cho always gave teachers a bye their first year – she figured that it took a year to settle in and find their style. After the second year, she would evaluate their performance. When she looked at the grades of the older science students after Mr. Raffles’ second year at Elton Park, she was dismayed: nearly all of the grades, except for those of the extremely gifted students, had dropped since Mr. Raffles had begun teaching.

Ms. Cho called some of the students into her office and asked them to describe their learning experiences with Mr. Raffles. It emerged that, while they respected his intelligence, he had an off-putting, and at times wooden, manner. He would occasionally ignore or mock questioners if he felt he’d already covered the material. One student complained that when she went to the lab after school for assistance, he’d shouted at her to leave, because he was in the middle of an experiment. He seemed to talk only to the top two students in the class, and they were the only ones who could understand him.

Following the conversation, Ms. Cho realized that she would have to confront Mr. Raffles, and talk to him about the need to connect emotionally with his students. A brilliant academic pedigree was excellent, but it needed to be accompanied by empathy and good manners if learning was to take place.

To help Mr. Raffles develop the emotional intelligence skills that he needs, Principal Cho should consider creating a list of areas for improvement that would include academic skills and lab organization (at which he excels) as well as self-awareness, social awareness, and relationship management, three areas where he lacks skills. In evaluating his responses to the list, she might start by emphasizing his intellect and lab skills, and then move on to a detailed, point-by-point explanation of what social awareness entails. This method would appeal to his rigorous scientific nature and would allow him to work through the issues intellectually.

A lot of education leaders wait until there is a problem before they make changes. This is not the optimal way to respond to challenges. You have to be proactive and practice a philosophy of continuous improvement. Continuous improvement means that instead of waiting for problems to occur, you regularly work on perfecting and updating your practices and procedures, no matter how well they are working. Essentially, you are always trying to be better. However, this does not mean that you constantly change things. In some instances, you are just monitoring the situation or process, and watching for possible signs that it needs to be improved.

For example, if school discipline referrals are at a historic low in their high school, most principals would toot their own horn, publicize their success and keep using the same process for handling discipline issues. Then they are caught off guard when discipline referrals suddenly spike the next year. If they were continuously monitoring the situation, they would see that the drop in discipline referrals was due to the hard work of two veteran teachers (grades 9^th and 11^th), and a football coach (20+ years).

The teachers and the coach required that students adhere to a level of decency in their classrooms and all others. Although she knew that they had an impact on school discipline, she never recognized the extent of their influence, as she placed too much faith in her own self-efficacy. Well, to make a long story short, these educators retired and left a leadership vacuum that went unfilled.

If the principal had recognized this beforehand, she could have asked these teachers to coach up their colleagues, helping them to develop the same type of influence, through tried and true measures. During their final year, they could have led professional development sessions that focused on just that. This is what we mean by continuous improvement. Now the principal is stuck spending most of their day handling student discipline, instead of being the complete leader that they would like to be.

As a principal, not everything will go your way. You will make plenty of mistakes, and at times you will fail. There may even be times when you won’t be able to isolate the cause of a problem. In these times, you must rely on your skills as a reflective practitioner.

Being a reflective practitioner means that when problems arise and you feel confounded or unsure of yourself, you take some time to reflect. Reflecting on a situation or issue, allows you to think critically about it, thus allowing you to formulate a series of appropriate responses. Afterward, you just implement your series of actions, and take a breath a sigh of relief when you see results.

Let’s look a scenario in which a principal is facing a complex issue, with lots of moving parts. After reflecting on the situation, he formulates long-term solutions that end up bringing the community together. After you finish reading the vignette, think of two additional strategies that the principal could have used. Reflect on your answer, using your thoughts to inform your practice.

Scenario: During the great recession of the late 2000s, many families from poor socioeconomic backgrounds fled inner city areas and moved to thriving, middle-class cities nearby. Principal Joseph Gutierrez’s school was located in a district that straddled a middle-class area populated mainly by European Americans and a much poorer area, where the housing was relatively inexpensive. During the flight from the inner cities, many socioeconomically disadvantaged families, most of them African American and Hispanic, moved into the poor area, and the number of minority students at his school nearly doubled.

Faced with a sudden drop in test scores, frictions between the middle-class and lower-class students, and an increased dropout rate, Principal Gutierrez realized he had to completely overhaul his school. Quick-fix solutions like begging the community for mentors to help disadvantaged students study during testing periods were not going to do much in the long run.

After extended discussions with staff members and the school board, he instigated monthly meetings for parents. He got local restaurants and taxi services to commit to providing free food and rides to and from the meetings, and teachers volunteered to provide activities for the children.

The parents held directed discussions on issues such as nutrition, bedtimes, and homework, with an emphasis on creating structures that would assist each other. Out of the discussions grew a network that extended across the socioeconomic lines. Over time, students’ test scores stabilized, and the communities grew closer together.

I have studied education leadership for over a decade, and one of the things that prevent school districts from enjoying continuous success is the lack of leadership sustainability. They just don’t have a leadership pipeline that will ensure that when one leader leaves, another equally qualified person can take their place.

A teacher leadership pipeline looks like this in a school setting. As the principal, you know that eventually, you will have to retire or even better, be elevated to a higher position. Because of this, you start grooming select teachers to become leaders, thus ensuring a leadership pipeline. You don’t have to look very hard, as you already know which teachers have the charisma, natural leadership abilities, communication skills, and temperament that it takes to be a principal.

Once you start identifying them, begin the mentorship process by delegating various leadership tasks to them. You can tap them to lead a school committee, organize a school event, analyze a data set, lead a professional development session, attend a central office meeting in your place, take charge of the building while you are away or absent.

If they seem to take to the added responsibility, confide in them that you think that they would make an excellent school principal and encourage them to enroll in a Masters program in Educational Leadership. Once they become a licensed administrator, you can hand them increasingly more challenging tasks, and encourage them to apply for an assistant principal position in the district, or stay and help your school continue its successes.

In the case of developing the exisiting assistant principals at your school, you can build their leadership capacity by assigning them to handle a few of the most challenging tasks or duties that need to be completed. For instance, in a high school setting, you may have one to four assistant principals, depending on the size of the school. If you have two assistant principals, try assigning each leader two grades to manage.

One could manage 9th and 10th grade, and the other could lead 11th and 12th grade. Place them in charge of discipline, curriculum, teacher relations, professional development, parent relations, etc., while you oversee the big picture, helping out where needed. Believe you me, you will have plenty of things that keep your attention, and you will need to coach them through a lot of situations.

You can also ask them to help you with things outside of their immediate duties, such as budgeting, school transportation, IT, food services, etc. In the end, they will learn how to be administrators in their own right, and the leadership pipeline is complete. If you do leave, you can tap the strongest one to be your replacement.

What did I miss?