At your school, do you go through your year being dragged from pillar to post by vendors, parents or your school district? It’s a problem as old as time which can make focusing on the big picture stuff a real difficulty. However, now we’re approaching the end of the school year, now is the best time to start maintaining your focus and planning with purpose.
As school leaders, our work is littered with new opportunities popping up and people vying for our attention. Some things seem important, but are they really contributing to your wider vision for your work?
In this week’s show, I impart the wisdom I’ve collected – with an analogy from my former superintendent – about how to keep going toward the outcome you set out to achieve, even if it means changing course in order to make it.
When you’re having a bad time at work, do you find yourself pointing the finger of responsibility at the actions of the people you work with? We’ve all been through the scene – we’re talking to our friends and making our work environment sound like everyone is out to make life miserable for us – that we’re somehow the victim and there is something fundamentally wrong with everyone who makes us angry.
Welcome to The Empowered Principal Podcast. Every tenth episode, I am paying tribute to my greatest teachers and influencers. And with this being the 20th episode, I have some words of gratitude for one of the people who has been a huge influence in shaping my journey as a coach and my life as a whole – the awe-inspiring Dr. Martha Beck.
We generally have an idea of the kind of principal we want to be when we finally receive the news that we have achieved the position. It’s usually exactly what we ourselves appreciated in a leader before we made it to the top. But it can be challenging when your vision and expectations don’t match up with the results you’re getting in your school.
I don’t think there is a human being on this planet who looks forward to receiving criticism. As school leaders, everything we do is scrutinized; by parents, students, and staff. It really is part of being a principal that we know all too well.