Tag Archives: school leadership

Being A Public Secondary School Principal Is Not For The Weak Of Heart

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Or anyone lacking superhuman interpersonal skills.

Jessica Winters’s story in The NewYorker titled ” The Meltdown of a Middle School in a Liberal Town” (April 3, 2024) left me wondering how a school district starts over. It’s a case study of things completely falling apart in an Amherst, Massachusetts public middle school. It features angry parents, school personnel ignoring the separation of church and state, educators wholly unprepared to work with trans students, cultural conflicts of all sorts, and many other layers of public school dysfunction.

Today there’s a similarly harrowing story in The New York Times, titled, “A Principal Confronted a Teenage Girl. Now He’s Facing Prison Time.”

The heart of the matter:

“For educators everywhere, the criminal prosecution of Mr. Sanchez for an action that schools typically handle using their own disciplinary codes opens up new levels of potential risk. Fights are part of high school life. If a school official can be not just disciplined but also jailed for intervening to break up or prevent a fight, what are teachers supposed to do?

In an interview, Mr. Sanchez mentioned a fight last year in which a teacher told the students to stop but did not physically separate them. ‘And the parent was just so upset when they saw the video, like, ‘Why isn’t this person stopping it?’’ he said. ‘And to be honest, I was a little upset, too. I didn’t say that to the parent, but I did say, ‘Well, because sometimes people are worried about liability.’”

Recently, I did a writing workshop with fifteen K-12 teachers who are seeking school principal certification. More specifically, they were applying for grants that provide them substitutes for their classrooms so they can get the required hours interning as administrators-to-be.

Impressive group, but after reflecting on these stories, I can’t help but wonder if they know what they’re committing to. The numerous simultaneous challenges they will soon face. The public’s anger and disregard for one another. The tenuousness of the public commons. The toll it will take on them and their families.

My guess is not entirely, because if they did, they’d probably choose professional paths where mere mortals stand much better odds of succeeding.

School Principal Shortage

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The Obama administration wants to improve public education by removing principals from poorly performing schools. Far fewer principals than planned have been replaced because most states are suffering from a shortage of credentialed, able principals.

As a result, Washington State is proposing an alternative routes principal certification plan for non-educators. Yes, for non-educators. One of the first things I learned at the different schools I worked at as a beginning teacher was few of my colleagues respected my principals even though they had taught previously. The majority sentiment was they had lost touch with teaching’s challenges. Adversarial teacher-admin relations were the norm.

How on earth will non-educators earn the respect of teachers? Legions of teachers will exit faculty meetings saying, “What the hell does he/she know about child or adolescent development, about curriculum and assessment, about teaching excellence?”

One wonders, what are the sponsoring state legislators thinking?

A friend of mine is a well respected high school principal. We run together. He tells stories. I listen. Often in amazement. It’s an incredibly demanding job. Impossible if faculty don’t respect you. There are lots of ways for leaders to earn respect, but the main one is to identify closely enough with the people you lead that they conclude, “He/she gets me and gets my work. They understand.” No certification program will compensate for non-educators’ lack of classroom teaching experience; consequently, they will struggle endlessly to earn the respect of their faculty.

But the news isn’t entirely bad. In the interest of fairness, I’m sure teachers will soon have the opportunity to run businesses, work as military officers, head up police departments, pastor churches, or practice law.