Using your time wisely as school Principal

You now have super powerful computers to help you to be organised for all the day to day jobs that a busy Principal has to do.  I am too far removed from the contemporary scene in schools to make much comment on how you go about your administrative tasks using this digital technology.

However I want to make the point that as school Principal no matter what the size and complexity of your school you are the educational leader first and foremost.  Thus you need to budget into your weekly timetable time to keep on top of how the learning program is going.  Part of this should be to have face to face contact with student groups but not to the extent that you spook the teachers into thinking that you are looking over their shoulders.

At any time an outsider should be able to ask you how the learning is going and receive an answer that convinces you are on top of this.

In very large secondary K-12 schools you can easily become very far removed from the learning as you have delegated persons who are very hands on with this.  There should however be a system of regular discussion with and reporting to you on how it is all proceeding.

I spent time as the Director of Human Resources for all the government schools in Western Australia.  I had 160 staff to do the work that affected the 32,000 Education Department employees.  I entered this job from the position of having been a school Principal and a Superintendent of Schools so I brought to the position a real hands knowledge of what it was like out there in school land.  Even with this experience it was hard to keep the focus that everything we did in Human Resources was for the betterment of learning in the schools.  I got rather desperate to keep a grip on the realities on the ground and recall a plea from a small very remote school that they had lost their school cleaners and had issues.  I asked my appropriate manager to set one of his staff urgently on to the problem until it was fixed.  The clerical person charged with fixing the issue did so quickly and effectively. Now the kids and staff of that school had a hygienic safe workplace once again.  The principal sent me some student art as a thank you and I was delighted to festoon my city office with the student output.  This is what it was all about.  I wrote a personal thank you note to the clerk who had dealt with the issue so quickly and effectively.

In this central office position my managers made sure that they and I together periodically visited the various school districts to support the Regional Superintendents and their Principals, teachers and non teaching staff.  We took on board the issues that came from the ground and on return to the central office I made sure that we took immediate action that was helpful.

My point as you can see is that as school administrators we must resist becoming too far removed from the student learning.

Sorry, I hope this post is not too much like teaching you to suck eggs.



May the Force be with you!


GD