The Principal's Handbook

] In today's episode, we're going to talk about how you can step back to take a bird's eye view and see beyond the daily grind.
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.
Welcome back. Today we're talking about how to see beyond the daily grind and have a vision for your school. As principals, it's so easy to get [00:01:00] lost in the day to day tasks that we have to do .
We have teachers coming to us with issues, students coming to us with issues, parents calling us, There's a lot going on and it's easy to forget what our own purposes and why we do our job. And we can easily lose sight of the big picture. If we let the day to day tasks run, everything that we're doing,, I know for me, I get so lost in the day to day sometimes that I forget what I'm working towards as a building, and so I have to bring myself back to not just the feeling of busyness and what I'm doing each day, but what is my overall purpose as a leader, and what is the big picture for the building, what is my vision for the building, and what am I trying to lead the teachers to work towards.
Our vision aligns with the goals that we set, and we set goals as a building leadership team to increase our reading scores, our math scores, and then we also set a goal for our students emotional well being and how we can support those.
[00:02:00] All really important things in a school. And then beyond those building goals, we have action steps underneath that we need to follow to make those things happen. And so when I'm thinking about what I want for the school and what the vision is, it's really implementing those goals and having successful students, seeing the progress with the students and having teachers and students growing.
It's easy to think about that. When you have time, but in the day to day, you're just trying to put out fires and you don't always remember the bigger picture of what you're doing as a principal. And the bigger picture is why we do it, right? My purpose for becoming a principal or why I became a principal was not to put out fires all the time.
It was not to constantly deal with discipline. It was to lead a school and have greater academic achievement and help teachers grow, help teachers learn, which helps our students learn. So it's really important that we step back and look beyond the daily grind and focus on our own why and purpose of being a [00:03:00] leader and how we're going to be that visionary for the teachers to follow.
So today I want to give you some strategies of how you can see beyond the daily grind and really have that vision for your school. The first strategy is to craft and display your vision. Whatever your vision is clearly articulate that to not only yourself, but then to your staff and your school, make sure you write it down and it's visible to you so that you're constantly thinking about what that vision is.
So that when you get wrapped up in discipline or the day to day incidents that come up, you have your vision posted somewhere in your office that you can see it and you can remember what you're working towards, because that's going to be your constant reminder. To keep moving forward and what you're working towards, because again, , it's really easy to get caught up in the day to day and get stressed and frustrated with the things that happen that we can't control and we have to put out fires for, but if you know your vision and you know where you're leading your staff.
That's going to keep you going. So have that posted somewhere as a [00:04:00] constant reminder so you can remember your why and where you're going as a building. The second strategy is to set and share building goals. So you are going to have your own vision of what you want to see for the building, but you wanna make sure you're setting, building goals.
with the teachers. So you want to develop concrete actionable goals that you can measure if you're meeting and make sure that each goal is not only measurable but has action steps of how you're going to complete that goal and how you're going to reach it. So you want to share your objectives and where you'd like to go with the staff and then create that shared sense of purpose and value and then create the goals that align with that.
And once you have your goals, you want to regularly check in. So you want to share your vision with the staff and you want to have that shared sense of purpose of this is where we Of this is where we're going. I always create building goals. We have a building [00:05:00] leadership team. So that's where we create our building goals.
And then we share them with our district leadership team. I think it's really important to take that time with staff, look at data, see where you need to. improve and then create goals together that's going to help move the building forward. And then my third strategy is you need to do regular check ins on those goals.
Any goal that you have, whether it's personally or professionally, you need to make sure that you're working towards that goal. And even with your building, you want to have specific times Throughout the year that you're checking your progress with your staff. And again, I do this through building leadership team meetings.
I know. Schools have different types of teams, instructional teams, or other teams where you can look at data, whatever that looks like at your school, just have different times where you can really focus on those goals.
You could also have an overarching goal for the building and then break those goals into grade level goals during PLCs. We do that as well where we have different [00:06:00] focuses for each grade level PLC. So the PLC, the professional learning community, knows where they need to go as a team.
That's another way to have those regular check ins is use that PLC time. But you want to make sure when you're doing a regular check in that you are assessing progress, that you're using data, that you're measuring how you are reaching those goals, because your goals should be measurable and you want to see how you're reaching them, to see if you're meeting that goal for your building, to see are you achieving the vision that you want to achieve for the building.
Strategy number four, begin each day with purpose. It's really important that you're starting every day by reflecting on your own actions and your own decisions and how those align with the school's vision and goals. You want to make sure that the things that you're doing in your day to day practice as a principal is aligning with what you're trying to do with the school.
And this could be very simple. For me, it's something as simple as getting [00:07:00] into classrooms. I love getting into classrooms each day and seeing what the teachers are doing in the classroom. I'm not in there long each day. It's not this long walkthrough, but I do try to go into every classroom each day
I have a picture in my mind. Of what teachers are doing and what instructional practices look like, and it's really exciting when I go in and I see the strategies that we've been teaching and professional development being implemented in the classroom. So being in the classrooms, checking in on that.
And just having that purpose of, you know, what we're working towards as a building and how it's going is really important and making sure that just those small daily tasks are aligned with where you're trying to go. We're always going to have those crazy days where there are days where I don't get in classrooms.
It's crazy. I'm dealing with discipline. I have, all kinds of incidents going on or just a lot of meetings that I don't get into classrooms. It's more often than not that I'm in classrooms. So just making sure that what you're doing and how you arrange your schedule [00:08:00] really is aligned with your purpose as a leader and where you want to take the building.
So if you want to be a good instructional leader and help you. Raise student achievement, then you need to show that by, being in classrooms being at PLC's where they're talking about instructional strategies. Really being intentional about how you're showing up each day as an instructional leader so that you can model that for the teachers in your building and that you can really lead with purpose and know what your vision is and what you're trying to achieve.
And another way that I like to think about this and my purpose is when I'm disciplining a student, and we do positive behaviors, interventions, and supports, PBIS in our building, but when I'm disciplining a student, do I want to take away instructional time? , I try my very best to not take away instructional time because most of the time those students who have behaviors struggle and I, they need that support in the classroom.
And so I don't want them in my [00:09:00] office away from classroom instruction. These are all things that we need to think about how it aligns with our bigger goals and what we're trying to accomplish. Strategy number five, make sure you're reflecting and adapting what you're doing. Regular reflection on the direction you're going as a school is really important.
Take time to evaluate what's working, what could be improved. You know, is it something that you could be changing as a building principal? Is it actions that you need to change in your day to day schedule? Or is it something that needs to change for teachers? So if you're trying to raise reading scores, one thing we always look at when we're looking at data is, is it an instructional problem?
Is it a curriculum problem? What is going on here?, we need to make sure that we're really taking the time to evaluate what we really need to make sure that we're taking the time to evaluate what's working and what could be improved and what could be improved.
I think PLCs is one of the best [00:10:00] times to do this because I can sit with grade level teams and really reflect on instruction and how things are going and then we can adapt and change as needed. And again, whether that's reading, math, or a social emotional goal, or just student wellness, whatever that is, just taking that time to have the conversations with teachers and then adapting when needed is really important.
And strategy number six. You as the leader want to engage in professional development. You want to continuously just seek opportunities for your own growth and learning. And it's important that you're promoting this for teachers as well. I think it's more common that principals are great about letting their teachers go.
Seek professional development and get better in their teaching. But we don't always go as the leaders because of time. And we don't learn the strategies that we want teachers to be using. Right now in Ohio, we have all of these laws around the science of reading and teaching using explicit reading instruction.
And that's a [00:11:00] perfect example of where it's so important that the principals are getting trained with the teachers so the principals know what good instruction looks like so that they can make sure that teachers are doing that instruction and they can support teachers throughout the process. I'm able to have better conversations with teachers because I know what they should be doing in the classroom.
Really being involved in your own professional development with instructional strategies and what we want from teachers is important. In helping them grow because we are the instructional leader in the building. And so we have to know what we want teachers to know so that we can support them. And also engaging in professional development, it not only helps your own skills and helps you be a better leader and a better principal, but
it also reinvigorates your passion for educational leadership and for being the leader in the building. I know I love learning new things and sharing them with teachers, .
And so we need to be doing that to be instructional leaders in [00:12:00] the building and to have that vision for the building of what we want to see happening. It's hard to lead with vision.
If we don't know what teachers are learning and how they're developing professionally, and strategy number seven is to foster a culture of recognition.
So celebrate those wins. Acknowledge when you see teachers doing things that they learned in professional development that align with the goals of the building and align with the overall vision of the building. I love when I go in classrooms, like I said earlier, and they're implementing new strategies we learned in PD.
And when that happens, I make sure to call it out to teachers. I make sure they know that I noticed that they implemented something that they learned. And they always are very excited when I noticed that and call that out because They're proud of themselves for implementing something that they learned.
We want to make sure that we're being positive towards that and sharing that progress because we also have to have those tough conversations about things not aligning with the vision of the building. So we need to make sure more [00:13:00] often than not, we're focusing on the positive with our teachers and really acknowledging that you see them trying to implement something that goes along with the building goals and vision.
Another thing we've done is we've been working, like I said earlier on the science of reading, so, our reading coach actually shared data for the district. that really dug deep so that teachers could see the progress that students were making and how hard they were working in that what we were doing was paying off.
And that was really important. Even when some of the data looked not great from a big standpoint of a student's composite or overall score, when we dug deep into where students were making progress, we could see that the instructional practices We were implementing, we're working, which are going to create better results for the overall picture later on.
So really digging into that data, sharing those wins, sharing the accomplishments, and really letting teachers know the good things that are happening. Even when there's still things to work on, we want to focus [00:14:00] on good things happening because that's going to motivate people to keep going. That's going to motivate the teachers to keep working towards that vision.
. So just to summarize, you know, teachers need to understand the vision. So when you craft the vision, you need to make sure you're constantly reminding your staff of the vision.
You need to set and share those building goals, schedule regular check ins, make sure you're beginning each day with purpose to align with those building goals and vision, and You're reflecting and adapting throughout the year on where your school is headed.
Also, you're engaging in professional development and you're fostering a culture of recognition where people can see the successes happening. Why is having a clear vision important? Implementing these strategies, it's not only going to help you see beyond the daily grind, but it's going to help inspire your staff to align their own efforts and their own teaching practices with your students.
the vision and goals set for the school. It's going to create a more focused environment for [00:15:00] teachers where they're motivated and they're working towards a common goal and vision. It's so easy to get stuck in the day to day, but without vision, we're not going to move the building forward. I love John Maxwell says a leader is one who knows the way.
goes the way and shows the way. So as the leader, we have to know where we're going. We have to lead in that direction and show it and model it to the staff. We want to be continually progressing as a building, but in a simple and clear way.
We don't want to make it complicated. You want a clear vision that's simple and teachers understand and they know where we're going. Because I think sometimes we overcomplicate things and we think, Well, there's so many things that we're working on, Or I'm not quite sure where we're going or what we're doing and just keep it simple.
Whether it's increasing reading and math scores by 5%, whatever that is, take small incremental changes and you're going to see growth over time. So just keep that vision alive and strong in your building. Keep showing up, [00:16:00] showing them that vision and be a person that they want to follow because you're going to model what that looks like and get them excited for what's in store.
If you follow that vision for the building, if you continue to follow your goals and make progress, you have to be the person who is showing your teachers it's possible. This vision is possible. We can do this. Students can do this. So you need to be the cheerleader for your building, showing that vision, showing what's possible, and really leading the way.
And if you want to take the next steps in doing this and want to work with me one on one, I would love the opportunity to work with you. I work with principals one on one and do coaching and I can help you with your mindset. I can help you with goal creation and just ways that you can work with staff to lead the building.
So if you're interested in that, reach out to me on Instagram at barbflowerscoaching or Go to my website at barbflowerscoaching. com if you love this show and you're listening on Apple, scroll down in your app and please leave a review that helps other [00:17:00] people find the show. 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 will see you back here next time.