The Principal's Handbook

Creating Your Personal Summer Professional Development Plan
[00:00:00] in today's episode, I wanna talk about creating your personal summer PD plan. That's all coming up next, right here on the Principal's Handbook. Stay tuned.
Welcome to the Principal's Handbook, your go-to resource for principals looking to revamp their leadership approach and prioritize self-care. I'm Barb Flowers, a certified life coach with eight years of experience as an elementary principal. Tune in each week as we delve into strategies for boosting mental resilience, managing time effectively, and nurturing overall wellness.
From tackling daily challenges to maintaining a healthy work life balance. We'll navigate the complexities of school leadership together. Join me in fostering your sense of purpose as a principal and reigniting your passion for the job. Welcome to a podcast where your wellbeing is the top priority.
Well, welcome to the Principal's Handbook. Today we are talking about creating your summer PD plan, and I'm talking about your summer PD plan for you, not [00:01:00] for your teachers or anybody else.
It's really the things that you want to do to sharpen your leadership skills or improve based on what happened this school year, , to make next year even better and to continue growing as a leader. And so I love this topic because I think often we think about how we want others to grow professionally.
Or we don't focus on growing professionally in an intentional way. And if we're not intentional about it, then it's really hard to continue that growth and the goal as a leader is to continue growing and developing, whether that's to grow and develop into a new role eventually, or just to continue being a better principle.
And so today I'm gonna give you three steps on what you need to do to create your own personal summer PD plan. So step number one, I want you to reflect on the school year. So take a few minutes and go back and really reflect on the school year, and I'm gonna give you some questions to think about.
But if you haven't listened to episode 41 of the podcast, I have a whole [00:02:00] episode there about reflecting on the school year that you could go back and listen to. But really before you think about the areas you wanna improve, it's important to reflect on what areas went well. So you wanna focus on celebrating, what are the areas that went well.
How did your leadership style improve over the school year? What relationships did you build? What positive outcomes happen this school year? Did you get positive feedback on your evaluation from your evaluator? , What are some things that went really well that you're proud of, and then , maybe you got positive feedback from a teacher.
You wanna think about , what were the good things that happened? Maybe you got better at communicating with parents, and you saw that on a survey you sent to parents, or you noticed that the discipline referrals went down. You saw that on your behavior data. Whatever that is, celebrate those strengths and look at the areas that you grew.
And then I want you to think about what negative feedback did you get from maybe staff, from parents, and sometimes we get [00:03:00] negative feedback and it's not necessarily valid, but , were there certain things you heard that were valid? For example, for me, if I had a parent who complained about everything, , if they gave me negative feedback, I didn't think much about it.
It wasn't valid because they always complained about things. . But if I had a parent who was pretty positive about things and then they tell me something negative or. Share something that they noticed that was negative, then usually I take that to heart because they're not a person who is always in that negative mindset, and they usually don't share negative things.
So just know who you're getting that negative feedback from. You have to be careful with that. But even for yourself, did you notice that you struggled with certain tasks or you felt out of your element in specific areas? Where there are areas that you hated because you just didn't feel as strong or as comfortable in that area?
And just get curious about that. Acknowledge it without judging yourself. It's all part of the growth process, and the more we can get curious about where things are good and where things are [00:04:00] uncomfortable for us, the more that we can continue to grow and learn. So you wanna think about what is that area you wanna improve for next year?
And so for me, ,, one example of this was hard conversations. , In my evaluation with my superintendent early on as a principal, this was an area he said that I needed to grow in. And I felt it. I tried to avoid hard conversations, right? I never felt like if I actually had the hard conversation, it went how I wanted to.
It to go. So I bought some books about it and did some studying of it on my own. I also did a mastermind, , where that was a topic in the Mastermind, so finding PD for yourself, , and we're gonna talk about that in a second, but really what is that topic that you wanna dive into and get better on Another year I wanted to work on our PBIS.
Tiers. We had tier one in place. It was pretty good. But I wanted to now work on tier two, our, work on our tier two committees and get that system in place better. And so I bought [00:05:00] books about tier two and behavior academies. I have a podcast episode on behavior academies as well, that I really recommend you listen to if you're interested in that.
But anyways, so I studied that and I got better at that and came up with ideas for the next year on how to improve behavior. Another area was actually confidence. So this one wasn't so much principle related, but I felt like I didn't have a lot of confidence in just trusting my leadership decision, like knowing that I made the right decision.
I had confidence in certain areas, but not all areas. And so then I, , searched out and that's actually when I got into coaching and learned about coaching. But Trish Blackwell has a podcast, the Confidence Podcast. I listened to that all the time and that was really my. That was really my personal slash professional development, , for the summer that I really focused on and really improved in my confidence skills.
So whatever it is for you, wherever you maybe have [00:06:00] negative feedback or you just. Feel uncomfortable, feel like you're not in your element in that area, then that could be your indicator that it's something that you need to focus your summer personal development on. . So step one, reflect on the school year to decide what that.
Focus is going to be. Then step two is find resources. Once you know where you wanna improve, now it's time to find resources. And there's so many different ways now to gather skills. Like when I first started as a principal, , maybe even more as a teacher there, it was just like, do a book study.
I felt like that was the only solution. Well, now, you know, there's so many podcasts out there. And so you can listen to a podcast that's what I did one summer was focused on my mindset and focused on the Confidence podcast. There's also so many online courses now, and I know some people don't like courses, but it's a nice way to dive deep into a subject.
I have bought tons of courses online related to business and things like that, and [00:07:00] so. I just know they're a great way to dive deeper into a subject and learn a skill. , Also books. You can still do book studies. Don't underestimate the power of a good book, listening to an audio book or buying the book and reading it in the summer.
I used to love reading books out in the sun. It was just a great way for me to get some, , personal development, but also enjoy my summer. Also investing in coaching. I did group coaching, I did mastermind groups. , Then I did one-on-one coaching, all kinds of coaching to improve these different areas.
So whatever it is for you, but you really wanna think about what the area is that you wanna improve and what is going to be the. Best way to continue to learn and grow. Maybe you even have a local, we call them ESCs, , educational service centers that offer professional development on certain topics, or we have state support teams that sometimes offer professional development
on certain topics, whatever you have locally that might have professional development topics too, if you're [00:08:00] able to attend conferences. I always went to my local, , Ohio Association of Elementary School Administrators, O-A-E-S-A, had a great conference that I went to every summer, and that was also a nice way to get some pd.
And think about what I wanted to do for the next year. And it's great to network with other principals. So again, step one, you have to reflect on the school year. Step two, find those resources and step three, set goals for the school year. So once you know what you want to improve and how you're going to do it,
you wanna set goals that are clear and actionable for the next school year because you wanna reflect and think about what will success look like for next year. You wanna know? How you'll reach that goal. And , it can be difficult, like I said, one year with confidence. For me, that's not an easy one to know what success will look like for you.
But one activity I have my clients do, it's called, knowing your 1.0 and 2.0 self. So it's really thinking about who is your 2.0 self, who is your more [00:09:00] confident version of yourself, or who is the leader that handles behavior better? What does that look like? So it's really thinking about your 2.0 version,
maybe I handle an incident at school and then I go home and I don't even think about it. Or, , maybe it's, I can handle discipline issues, but I'm actually reducing those office referrals. Whatever that success looks like, really think about that 2.0 version of you and how that will look. And then think about how you're gonna measure progress.
We all know about smart goals, right? Is it measurable? But think about what kind of checkpoints you can do. And like I said, certain goals are more measurable than others. Others might be more of a qualitative approach, , where you're just reflecting and looking back and seeing how you made progress. But if you're implementing a new PBIS strategy, use your data and see if the data went down.
If you are working on reading strategies with teachers, use your data, see if the data is changing, see . If students are achieving higher. [00:10:00] So think about how you're gonna measure progress, and then what's your timeline. So break your goals into smaller, manageable tasks.
So thinking about, maybe I'm gonna check in on my goal at the beginning of the year. I'm, , I'm creating it now at the beginning of summer. . I'm gonna check on it at the beginning of the school year and then every nine weeks, , whatever works for you, but just plan a clear timeline that you can check in on those goals.
So again, I just wanna review, you're gonna reflect on the school year. Go back to episode 41 if you haven't. Taking time to really reflect, find resources of how you're going to actually improve, and then sit down and really set a goal and think about what that success will look like. Visualize yourself having that success and think about how you're gonna constantly check up on that progress.
So those are the three simple steps to create your summer PD plan, and you can always reach out to me at barb@barbflowerscoaching.com if you're interested in a free consultation where we can see if coaching is right for you. I also have [00:11:00] things like the eight to four principle blueprint.
That is a course that you can go through and figure out how to get done at work every day at four o'clock or at the end of your contractual time. Okay, so I have lots of resources. Go to barbed flowers coaching.com/courses. I have some things you could look at if you want to have better time management deal with behaviors next year.
, There might be some things there that's helpful for you, but by putting plans into action. You'll be better equipped to lead the next school year with confidence and make meaningful improvements to your school. Just remember that if you're upset about how something ended, I think often as principals, we think, or even teachers, if I take time, it's just gonna be better in the fall when I come back.
And I can tell you from experience, when I would come back every year, it felt like I never left, and so you have to do intentional work. Like there is no break. . If you wanna get better at difficult conversations, you have to do the work to get better at it. If you wanna get [00:12:00] better at managing behaviors, you have to do the work to get better.
If you wanna get better at managing your time, you have to be very intentional. These things don't just get better over time with a break, so make sure you're putting an intentional plan in place, and thank you so much for tuning into the Principal's handbook today. If you love the show, if you're listening on Apple, scroll down in your app, leave a review.
I'll see you next time with more tips to support your growth as a school leader. Keep in mind, you have the power to shape your life according to the mindset you choose. I hope you have a great week, and I'll see you back here next time.