Report From The Principal’s Office: A 200-Day Inspirational and Aspirational School Leadership Journal is a uniquely formatted book, written by a former teacher, principal, and school-district superintendent, that combines the creative task of daily journaling with critical readings that reflect on the art, craft, and skills required to be a successfully school-building administrator.
Presented in a format that employs multiple stylistic approaches, ranging from chucklesome sense-of-humor stories to soliloquies of sensitive solemnity and from creative storytelling to school-based experiential documentaries. All of the commentaries speak to and about real school-based practices, possibilities, “people-to-people” situations, events, triumphs, and setbacks; and the powerful (good and bad) impacts of all of those happenings on all of the people relying on those schools; the effects, particularly “the emotional toll” of organizational events, adverse incidents and experiences on the leaders of those schools; and most importantly, their ultimate effects on the students of those schools ability to achieve academically.
Although specifically designed for current serving principals or assistant principals and professional educators who aspire to or are presently studying to become school-building and/or district level administrators, superintendents, district-level directors, coordinators, and supervisors, the language is structured to allow broader access to a diverse non-school based leadership public education stakeholder audience (e.g., parents, college professors, journalists, senior public education policymakers, elected officials, and tax-paying citizens) to find this Book accessible and “eye-opening” helpful in understanding the often “forgotten,” “unclear” or “hidden-from-public-view” inner workings of public Pre-K-12 schools.
Serving as a principal and supervising principals has given me a unique and deeper understanding of “what happens” or “does not happen” along the school building leadership effectiveness spectrum. For example, this Book seeks to answer the call for having a much more in-depth, “on-the-ground” case study based research and thoughtful analysis approach about topics like: the measurable attributes of an effective school building principal, the quality level of a school’s enhancing educational opportunities “environmental culture,” the effects of good instructional coaching on teaching and learning, a school’s staff mentoring and professional development capabilities, the level of administrative and operational management effectiveness; a school’s capacity to emotively embrace those students who are kept at arm’s length from our nation’s welcoming spirit of promised fairness and opportunity; and finally, what is that schools overall (across multiple diverse-needs cohorts) students’ academic performance profile; therefore, ultimately revealing the efficacious core collective thinking and daily good or bad habits-of-work quality of that school’s staff and specifically, its primary political, philosophical and pedagogical leader——the Principal!
In this Book, I explain, based on my experience as a principal, but mainly as a superintendent, why some schools, commonly referred to as “good,” are really not that “good.” While other schools (many Title 1) that may not receive the “good” designation are in actuality “punching far above their academic achievement expectations weight!”
These 200-Daily practical conceptualizations offer aspiring school administrators a road map for realizing the essential work that awaits them. In addition, it offers presently serving school-building leaders the opportunity to reflect on their current leadership work; while simultaneously providing a process for the daily reflection and documentation on what that leadership practice could become if it were to reach its highest highly-effective performance stages.
The Book is available on Amazon:
Paperback edition with notetaking daily journaling pages included: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0578916509/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=Report+From+The+Principal%27s+Office&qid=1647679684&sr=8-1
eBook edition: (Note: The eBook will not contain the journaling pages)
https://www.amazon.com/Report-Principals-Office-Inspirational-Aspirational-ebook/dp/B09VHCB8WF/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3KEL25MH28J0N&keywords=Report+From+The+Principal%27s+Office&qid=1647450093&sprefix=report+from+the+principal%27s+office%2Caps%2C830&sr=8-1
Sample Table of Content Topics:
- The Ethical Principalship.
- The Principal is the single most influential difference-maker in a school’s success or failure
- It’s almost always not about you—until it is!
- The twelve fundamental and foundational programmatic steps for raising student academic achievement.
- What you don’t know will hurt you: The hard truth about the “soft-skills” knowledge required for the principalship
- If a (middling or low-performing) school is chronically underperforming, then “game-changing” strategies are needed!
- The Empathetic Principalship.
- “I led the staff effectively, but they just did not follow me effectively!”
- The art of strategic-luck-making.
- The Emotionally Intelligent Principalship.
- The not-so-good, the good, the great, and the highly effective school-building leader
- The Authentic Principalship.
- Artfully Crafting a Leadership Collage Personality
- The urgency of practicing a pedagogy of insurgency!.
- The Mindful Principalship.
- The 2020-21 Coronavirus—a painful, teachable moment in exposing civic and public education’s leadership inadequacies
- Bushido SuperVision: Connecting your principalship life with that samurai life.
- Successful principals employ attracting success principles!
- Meta in loco parentis: “Would I want this for my own child?”
- How to best prepare for those unforeseen problematic school incidents.
- Successfully Managing the Principal-Superintendent Relationship.
- The highly effective principal’s toolbox.
- Every school needs an assistant principal of operations and administrative management
- “It’s not a matter of if it will happen; it’s only a matter of when will it be your turn!”
- The Principalship as Poetry.
- In your principalship practice, be totally comprehensible, and at the same time, be totally mysterious!
- “Principal, do you have ‘staff favorites’ in your building?”
- The Self-Reflective Principal.
- Is it realistic to want to be highly effective in both your Principalship and “Parenting-ship” roles?
- The 5 R’s of building a powerfully positive school profile.
- If their last principal was an S.O.B., there’s a good chance that you’ll be the next S.O.B.!
- The Inspirational Principal.
- The hidden job description.
- Honestly principal, who can you talk to, honestly?
- The Entrepreneurial Principal.
- What do the best principals do after they realize that…
- Bad leadership is like a bad virus!
- The Beautiful Simplicity: Applying Ockham’s “law of parsimony” hypothesis to raise student academic performance.
- The Elegant Complexity: Operationalizing Chekhov’s “literary gun theory” to raise student academic performance.
- A Thinking Principalship.
- Faith in Your Leadership is…
- Having Leadership Courage is…
- Practicing Leadership Charity is…
- Offering Leadership Love is…
- Ethical Righteous Authority means…
- Wise Righteous Authority…
- That very bad start to a new school year…
- Are highly effective principals born, or…
- Try not throwing yourself “under the bus”!
- Schools should be all about the Benjamins, da Vincis, and Galileos…
- Identifying, appointing and developing more highly effective principals?
- 20 best ways to invest in the development and success of Assistant Principals.
- Providing a Leadership of Hope is…
- This page is for superintendents (principals can peek, I won’t tell).
- How can we identify, professionally develop, and appoint more highly effective principals? —It’s as easy as 1-2-3!
- Preparing for your end-of-year Superintendent’s Principal Performance Review Meeting.
Your report from the principal’s office has arrived!
Report From The Principal’s Office: A 200-Day Inspirational and Aspirational School Leadership Journal. (RFTPO)
The RFTPO Book: The second work in a unique series of school leadership books by a former teacher, science center director, principal, and superintendent; these books seek to explore, explain and propose solutions to the present challenges of identifying and creating great schools and (most likely led by) great school leaders. RRTPO combines the creative task of daily journaling with critical daily commentaries reflecting on the art, craft, talents, and skills required to be a successful PreK-12 educator, specifically, achieving success as a highly-effective school-building administrator.
Readership: Although specifically designed for current serving principals or assistant principals and professional educators who are aspiring or studying, or are presently serving in the capacity of a school-building and/or district level administrators, superintendents, district-level directors, coordinators, and supervisors, the language is structured to allow broader access to a diverse non-school based leadership public education stakeholder audience (e.g., parents, college professors, journalists, senior public education policymakers, elected officials, and tax-paying citizens) to find this Book accessible and “eye-opening” helpful in understanding the often “forgotten,” “unclear” or “hidden-from-public-view” inner workings of public Pre-K-12 schools. And the unique challenges the leaders of those schools are forced to correctly problem-pose and successfully problem-solve daily.
Why the focus on the principalship?
This Report From The Principal’s Office (RFTPO) book, in many ways, presents a concise daily compilation
and an extended explanation of my professional interpretation of why some school-based administrators are incredibly successful (Day-103: “The highly effective principal’s toolbox will always contain these seven critical leadership skills tools”). And why, unfortunately, others are tragically unsuccessful.
While still, others are committed to pursuing a mediocre/status-quo path, which is another way of being unsuccessful! (Day-152: “The not-so-good, the good, the great, and the highly effective school-building leader”).
Why focus on the need for better school-based leadership professional development?
First, because the emotional and educational well-being of students, staff members, parents, whole communities, and our nation is at stake, but also…
Unfortunately (Day-47: “It’s not a matter of if it will happen; it’s only a matter of when will it be your turn!”) every year in the US, thousands of principals and assistant principals are either verbally or in writing (both are long-term career-damaging) disciplined or sadly in some cases removed for lack of knowing the “unspecified job requirements” expected of a school building administrator. (Day-54: “What you don’t know will hurt you: The hard truth about the “soft-skills” knowledge required for the principalship.”)
Leadership standards matter, and leadership quality matters the most at the operational core of a school’s success (or failure)!
Let’s face it, we are a ‘standards-based’ profession, so why would standards only apply to students and parents, but not professional educators, and specifically for the purposes of my work —School-based and district office educational leaders! So I start the RFTPO book off with two consecutive days of resolute affirmations:
“Day-1:The Principal is the single most influential difference-maker in a school’s success or failure.”
And then on,
“Day-2: The Principalship is a singularly unique position in PreK-12 education.”
These two opening chapters are in no way an attempt to minimize or dismiss the critical work of the other skilled essential personnel (custodians, cafeteria staff, teachers, paraprofessionals, etc.) required to operate a school; for even the best practicing principal could not function in a highly-proficient capacity if they had to (an impossibility) teach every class, prepare every lunch, as they kept the building clean and well-maintained; instead, my focus (and my intellectual interest), is based to a large extent on my experiential principalship praxis work; but, I am further inquiry-incentivized by my work-experience questions that were ‘planted’ and grew out of my time as a supervisor of principals, a superintendent. (Day-55: “Are highly effective principals born, or can good leadership skills and talents are taught and developed?”)
Available on Amazon:
Paperback edition with notetaking daily journaling pages included: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0578916509/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=Report+From+The+Principal%27s+Office&qid=1647679684&sr=8-1
eBook edition: (Note: The eBook will not contain the journaling pages):https://www.amazon.com/Report-Principals-Office-Inspirational-Aspirational-ebook/dp/B09VHCB8WF/ref=sr_1_2?crid=22UNFBHCBE8IH&keywords=Report+From+The+Principal%27s+Office&qid=1647679855&sprefix=report+from+the+principal%27s+office%2Caps%2C1009&sr=8-2