The Principal's Guide to the First 100 Days of the School Year

Creating Instructional Momentum

Shawn Joseph

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781317924944
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

For veteran principals, new principals, and aspiring principals, this book is a valuable resource for building instructional momentum during the beginning of the school year. Educational leadership expert Shawn Joseph guides administrators through five key areas:

• Vision
• Instructional Leadership
• Politics
• Data
• Planning

With detailed timelines, practical advice, and ready-to-use resources, Joseph explains the essential steps to leadership success that will continue throughout the school year.

Supplemental Downloads available to book-buyers!

1

Become the
Great Communicator:
The Power of a Shared Vision

Activities in this chapter support the following principal leadership standards:

Educational Leadership Policy Standards

ISLLC 2008 Standard 1: Education leaders promote the success of every student by facilitating the development, articulation, implementation, and stewardship of a vision of learning that is shared and supported by all stakeholders.

National Board Core Propositions for Accomplished Educational Leaders

Accomplished educational leaders have a clear vision and inspire and engage stakeholders in developing and realizing the mission.

In the year 2009, all across America, the phrase, “Yes, we can” became synonymous with a political movement for change in American politics. Whether you agree or disagree with President Barack Obama’s politics, his framing of a message was a masterful lesson that all principals should understand: you need a simple message that can be packaged and communicated to your staff, parents, and students.

People want to know what you are thinking. Let’s face it. From the moment you walk into your building as a principal, staff members are stressed! Staff, parents, and students are constantly thinking, “What does the principal want from me? How hard will I be expected to work? How will the principal’s actions affect my life?” Your first hundred days of the school year will set the stage not only by answering these questions, but by establishing the processes and systems that you are going to use to communicate your professional beliefs, values, and expectations. More importantly, in the first hundred days, you should collaborate with parents, staff, and students to communicate the school’s shared vision of excellence. One major task in your first hundred days will be to determine whether your school has a powerful shared vision already in action or needs to revisit or re-create a shared vision of excellence.

This is a really big, important task to accomplish, but you have no need to worry! The remainder of this chapter will outline some “think-abouts” for you as you work through the processes and systems you will develop to effectively steward a shared vision of excellence within your school community. You’ll discover that great oratorical skills are not as important for your success as effective processes and systems of communication.

Your Beliefs and Motivation

You haven’t lived in a vacuum all of your life. Your personal experiences have shaped your beliefs, and your beliefs have shaped your leadership style. As the principal, you’ll need to reconcile your beliefs with the beliefs that exist in your school. Many leaders fail because they do not take time to understand the system in place. A leader may walk into a building and attempt to impose a new value system on the organization. Bad idea! The system in place was there before you, and it will take a long time to change it. Understanding the culture that exists and starting the conversation about excellence with those aspects that are in line with your beliefs will get you off to a good start.

In an ideal world, your school would share your own beliefs, values, and educational philosophy. In reality, things may be a little different. It is therefore important for you to openly, honestly, and gradually allow the staff, parents, and students to learn what you believe about education and excellence. You are not asking them to accept what you believe, although it would make life easier if they just did what you wanted them to do! What you are doing is saying, “My actions are based upon this set of values that I have lived by, and I want you to understand why I may initially do what I do.” This process takes the anxiety and guessing out of your actions. Transitions at the start of a new year are not easy for people, and your constituency needs to know what life is going to be like under your leadership. As the leader of your building, you need to work in a very transparent manner. In addition, you want to openly communicate your beliefs and values in order to give your constituency a chance to connect with you on a personal level. Remember, trust can be built only on a positive, foundational relationship based on common interests, beliefs, and values. Open communication of your beliefs and values can be used to relieve anxiety, create opportunities to connect, and lay a foundation for trusting, positive relationships. It is human nature to search for points of connection with the people that you work closely with in an organization. By modeling the way for your staff and community, you can inspire others to express their values and beliefs openly as they come to understand and accept your leadership.

Over time, you will invite your staff, parents, and students to share their vision of excellence. In this way, you can build or reinforce a community vision that will set the standard for the hard work that lies ahead of you. The following are some suggestions for you to think about as you work to communicate your vision of excellence.

♦ Graphically display your vision of teaching and learning (on a poster, flyers, on the school website, etc.). Share it with staff members and parents, and give them an opportunity to talk with you about aspects they agree or disagree with. Collecting these reactions will help you avoid landmines in the future. A sample graphic display is shown in Figure 1.1.

Figure 1.1 Personal Core Values and Vision

♦ Use your first few community newsletters or the school’s Web site to share your educational beliefs and motivations. Include your e-mail address to allow parents, staff, and students to share their comments.

♦ Write a monthly message to parents and display it prominently on your school’s website. See Figures 1.2A and 1.2B (pages 6–9).

Figure 1.2A Sample Web Message for Parents (July or August)

I would like to welcome you to Utopia High School. Utopia High School has been in existence since 1994. Our goal is very simple: we want to create a dynamic learning environment where our students can learn and grow.

At Utopia High School, we will show students how much we care for them through our expectations of them. We expect our students to take rigorous courses. We expect them to respect one another. We expect parents to be equal partners in their children’s learning. We expect our students to do their best!

We are a large high school, but it is my goal to give families the personal attention you deserve. Our doors are always open for you to come in and visit your child. It is very important for you to know what your child is learning. It is my hope that you will frequently visit schoolnotes.com to keep abreast of your child’s classroom assignments.

We are in the process of revising our mission statement and vision statement as a school community. We gathered preliminary feedback from parents, students, and staff this summer. We will continue to gather feedback at the beginning of the school year. Our goal is to clearly articulate our school’s belief system and our school vision. A theme for this year is that everything we do will be a matter of PRIDE. I want you and every staff member to be proud of the great things that are happening here at UHS.

During the month of September, we will be having a magazine drive as a school fund-raiser. I’d like to raise money to purchase a mobile computer lab and help fund a Saturday school program to help more UHS students successfully enroll in advanced placement courses. In addition, Back-to-School Night will be on XXXX at 7 p.m. This is an important night when you can meet your child’s teachers and learn about your child’s “school world.”

I hope you find this Web site useful as we continue to improve our ability to communicate with you. I will update this site monthly with upcoming events and reports. I am looking forward to seeing you all on XXXX at Back-to-School Night. If you have any questions in the interim, please give us a call (XXX-XXX-XXXX) or stop by the school. Once again, I am humbled by the opportunity to serve you.

Figure 1.2B Sample Web Message Highlighting Procedural Changes for the Community (September)

We are off and running. We had a wonderful kickoff for the ______ school year. Your children are wonderful, and they have been demonstrating their Utopia Middle School PRIDE by their enthusiasm for learning and their positive behavior.

I’d like to spend a moment addressing some of our new procedures here at Utopia Middle School. These procedures were put in place to help our school maintain a safe, academically rich learning environment.

New Procedures

Common assessments: Each teacher teaching a similar subject will be giving similar weekly assessments. These will allow teachers to discuss instructional practices. The assessments will also allow teachers to regroup students so students who have mastered course objectives can progress, while students who need more time to master course objectives can get the support that they need.

Focus on reading: Each team is in the process of identifying specific content-area reading strategies that will be used in all your child’s classes. This process will allow students to “own” a set of reading strategies that will improve comprehension of grade-level and above-grade-level text.

School Notes: You can see what your child is learning and the homework assignments for the week by going to www.schoolnotes.com. All you need to do is enter our zip code and find your child’s teacher’s name.

Morning procedures: Staff members monitoring students are not required to be on duty until 7:25 a.m., so students cannot enter the building until 7:30 a.m. This rule is for their safety. At 7:30 a.m., any student eating breakfast is allowed into the cafeteria. Students must remain there until 7:45.

Between 7:30 a.m. and 7:45 a.m., all sixth-grade students report to the sixth-grade hallway, all seventh-grade students report to the cafeteria, and all eighth-grade students report to the back of the school by the gym entrance. When the weather is bad, eighth-grade students will report to the gym. At 7:45, all students are released from their areas, and they must go to their lockers and report to class by 7:50. Our goal is to minimize wandering through the halls. We expect students to be prepared for learning by 7:55.

Lunch procedures: Students are walked to and from the cafeteria by their teachers. To begin the school year, students in each grade level will sit in alphabetical seating. We follow this procedure for a number of reasons:

♦ We need to practice emergency lunch procedures.

♦ Students need t...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Supplemental Downloads
• About the Author
• Contents
• Foreword
• Introduction
• 1 BECOME THE GREAT COMMUNICATOR: The Power of a Shared Vision
• 2 LEAD OTHERS BY DESIGN
• 3 THINK LIKE A MAYOR
• 4 PARTY LIKE A DATA ROCK STAR
• 5 PLAN YOUR WORK AND WORK YOUR PLAN
• Master Timeline for the First 100 Days
• Resources
• References