Report From The Principal’s Office Book/Journal 200 Content Topics.

Daily Table of Content Topics

  • The Principal is the single most influential difference-maker in a school’s success or failure.
  • The Principalship is a singularly unique position in PreK-12 education.
  • School leadership “growing-pains”: Making sure your first year as a principal is not your last year as a principal!
  • The twelve fundamental and foundational programmatic steps for raising student academic achievement.
  • If a (middling or low-performing) school is chronically underperforming, then “game-changing” strategies are needed!
  • The schoolhouse doors are opening for a new school year; is your personal house in order?
  • Are you getting hit from all sides and feeling overstretched? (Welcome to the principalship!).
  • The past need not always stay in the past.
  • Artfully Crafting a Leadership Collage Personality.
  • The new students and parents orientation: A tremendously useful, teachable moment!
  • Back to school events (BTSE): Don’t waste this fantastically excellent information sharing opportunity!
Book-Journal Pages
  • That very bad start to a new school year.
  • The Ethical Principalship.
  • The amazingly important new school-year opening teacher-staff meeting/conference.
  • It’s almost always not about you—until it is!
  • The importance of getting to know your students.
  • The best countermoves for that “faux-bullying” parent.
  • What’s the best approach to help new staff members be awesomely successful?
  • Bushido SuperVision: Connecting your principalship life with that samurai life.
  • Ethical Righteous Authority means you can’t always ask for permission to act.
  • Wise Righteous Authority means there are times when you should ask for permission to act.
  • The Empathetic Principalship.
  • “Is this a public school?”
  • How to best prepare for those unforeseen problematic school incidents.
  • Meta in loco parentis: “Would I want this for my own child?”
  • 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.
  • Embracing the learning standards of a Common Core Curriculum for creating a highly-effective school building leader.
  • Dealing with that recalcitrant staff person.
  • Dealing with that recalcitrant principal—possibly yourself?
  • The Emotionally Intelligent Principalship.
  • The Authentic Principalship.
  • The Principal as a Principled Peacemaker.
  • Serving as the school’s chief equalizer of parental advantage and neutralizer of parental disadvantage.
  • Establishing the critically vital parent/principal alliance.
  • A core good school leadership skill: The ability to reduce the possibility and severity of school emergency incidents.
  • In your principalship practice, be totally comprehensible, and at the same time, be totally mysterious!
  • The art of strategic-luck-making: It’s not relying on “chance” for something wonderful to happen in your school.
  • Principal, are you thinking about becoming a superintendent? Well, there’s one thing I want you to contemplate first.
  • It’s one of those Beauty and Beastly days in the life of a high school principal.
  • Honestly principal, who can you talk to, honestly? Building a safe psychotherapeutic zone around yourself.
  • For those preparing themselves to be school administrators: Have you had “The Talk” with the people you love?
  • Principals are human: Applying good leadership knowledge and skills in effectively supervising your personal life.
  • A meaningful leadership practice: At and In the heart of principalship faithfulness is the learning to embrace doubt.
  • Is it realistic to want to be highly effective in both your Principalship and “Parenting-ship” roles?
  • Investing in and effectively managing the outside-of-regular-classroom programs and activities.
  • “It’s not a matter of if it will happen; it’s only a matter of when will it be your turn!”
  • The “Good School” correlation and connection to highly effective principal coaching.
  • Your school family members (SFMs) have some key questions to ask about your leadership capabilities; it won’t work trying to avoid them!
  • Why SuperVisionary school leaders will engage in an annual leadership Daydreaming vacation.
  • Just focus on being your best, strongest self in your leg of the professional educational relay race!  
  • Those essential (end of the school-day) school leadership informational, debriefing, and evaluation sessions.
  • Those critical (end-of-the-week) school leadership analysis, advisement, and planning sessions.
  • What you don’t know will hurt you: The hard truth about the “soft-skills” knowledge required for the principalship.
  • Are highly effective principals born, or can good leadership skills and talents be taught and developed?
  • An uncompromising principalship imperative: Give teachers a safe space to teach and students a safe place to learn!
  • Bad leadership is like a bad virus!
  • A constructive response to the self-destructive habits of Black and Latino male students: Case Study #1.
  • A constructive response to the self-destructive habits of Black and Latino male students: Case Study #2.
  • How to best prepare for the Superintendent’s announced or unannounced school visits.
  • Bridging formal and informal education: Great schools discover and grow every student’s special skills, gifts, talents, and hobby interests!
  • What you fail to supervise and manage in a school building will still get supervised and managed—just not by you!
  • Don’t ever diminish or destroy a student’s access to strong parental support.
  • The Mindful Principalship.
  • Decision-Making & Difference-Making: Breaking Ineffectual Cycles of Same-Difference School Improvement Plans.
  • Do you feel at times like walking away from your principalship? (Well, so did I for eleven years!).
  • Bad educational service is an expression and end product of Bad customer service.
  • Successfully Managing the Principal-Superintendent Relationship.
  • The Subversive School-Based Leader.
  • What is the true Culture of your school?  
  • Every school needs an assistant principal of operations and administrative management.
  • Desperately needed in public education: A serious series of ethical directives.
  • Yes, by all means, have your teachers teach to, above, and beyond the (standardized) test!
  • “Principal, do you have ‘staff favorites’ in your building?”
  • Part of the effective principalship practice is not throwing yourself under the bus!
  • Some interesting school-leadership phenomena to ponder.
  • The School District Office’s “calling” is not to call schools constantly—helping to reduce the stresses of the principalship.
  • Design a main and principal’s office escape plan.
  • That which we call a school by any good name is still… 
  • It’s simply not enough to ask kids who are bringing “emotional backpacks” full of pain and trauma to school every day; to just act “normal”. 
  • Reports from the before school early mornings or the after-school evenings principal’s office thinking alone moments.
  • Why, even if it doesn’t appear to be broken, you may still want to fix it—Hidden bad organizational habits can undermine the best work of even the best schools!
  • “Want the people you supervise to be successful?” Start with asking questions about them, but at the same time, ask a few questions about your own coaching capacity and commitment.
  • The Principalship as Poetry.
  • A smart and easy principal win: Back your teachers when they hold students to high expectations and standards.
  • It takes a school village of Courageous, Committed, and Consciously Aware adults to educate a child effectively.
  • Those clandestine relaxation tricks utilized to offset a principal’s hectic and challenging days.
  • “I led the staff effectively, but they just did not follow me effectively!”
  • “Did that parent just say what I thought she said?”
  • I Am The Boss of This School!” —But is that who you really want to be?
  • A consequential leadership contradiction: The constraining limits and vast influential reach of supervisory power.
  • You are replaceable, so take good care of both your hearts!
  • Build an ARC before student destructive behaviors and academic failure reigns in your school!
  • Effectively managing high-risk (of something terrible happening) events and activities that occur every school year.
  • Four politically correct “Eduspeak” throwaway lines that hide how we throw away too many children.
  • Twenty of the best ways to effectively invest in the professional development and success of Assistant Principals.
  • A holiday gift list for that principal who (you believe) has everything they need.
  • Avoid those unprincipled and “unprincipal-like” conflicts with staff, students, and parents.
  • Be smart and strategically thoughtful when designing “instructional practices professional development activities”.
  •  Create an educationally dynamic school by building up a full head of school culture STEAM!
  •  A Thinking Principalship: The most effective school-building leaders continuously think about leadership thinking.
  •  L.E.A.D. or get out of the way of your school’s potential for success!
  •  The highly effective principal’s toolbox will always contain these seven critical leadership skills tools.
  •  With so many stakeholder friends like these, some public school children don’t need any enemies!
  •  When doing a serious incident investigation, utilize True Detective techniques.
  •  Give some quality strategic time to those students who are capable academically but are quietly underperforming.
  •  The principalship is not just a title or what you do; it’s who you really are as a person!
  •  What do the best principals do after they realize that…
  •  Some brief but important school-building leadership things to think about.
  •  The 5 R’s of building a powerfully positive school profile.
  •  I traveled autobiographically backward to help my students to move forward academically.
  •  I am “retired” but not yet tired of thinking about school leadership and its relationship to life in general and specifically  to our present state of public education.
  •  Academic competitions are both indicators and incubators of a school’s academic achievement aspirations. 
  •  “It’s not my fault; the MTA bus made me late!”: Helping students expand their locus of psychological and linguistic control.
  •  Should public schools be forced to follow FDA-like “truth in advertising” laws and regulations?
  •  When seeking support from non-public school entities, principals should not get in their own resources acquiring way.
  •  There are times when you may want to give your own self a timeout!
  •  Education is a political act — Schools are instruments of political power — Therefore, the principalship is political practice; and so…
  •  What’s your “next act” professionally and personally?
  •  The school operational leadership task of always mindfully magnifying your message.
  •  Building a learning community and a community of learners’ school: A project-based pedagogical model.
  •  What does your website tell others about your school? What does your website do for your school?
  •  A special type of leadership quality is made possible by having a special type of leadership humility wisdom.
  •  In public education, Language (words, terms, labels, definitions, etc.) is never politically neutral.
  •  What reveals a school’s true instructional coaching character? —That school’s approach to the formal lesson observation process.
  •  “Where in his IEP does it say that he can act like a doggone fool?
  •  Be an ethical, proficient leader, and simultaneously Be a proficient, ethical leader!
  •  How do we carefully but honestly tell poor students and students of color that life is basically unfair?
  •  “My bad, I forgot to celebrate last year’s victories!”  
  •  The hidden job description: The unstipulated set of need to “knowables, doables, and beables” of the principalship.
  •  The importance of having a club, team, and special activities recruitment fair early in the school year.
  •  Supporting the superintendent’s school-building administrators “who’s next up” bench list.
  •  Designing a school’s budget is ultimately a political, pedagogical, ethical, and leadership competency act.
  •  Preparing for your end-of-year Superintendent’s Principal Performance Review Meeting.
  •  You learn a lot about parenting and the human personality while serving in the principalship.
  •  School-building crimes and punishment: A professionally ethical student disciplinary procedures practice. 
  •  My dream school is a D.R.E.A.M. and S.T.R.E.A.M. school!
  •  If their last principal was an S.O.B., there’s a good chance that you’ll be the next S.O.B.!
  •  The art and craft of effective school leadership is the balancing of consistency and adaptability in your leadership style.
  •  The Inspirational Principal.
  •  When society pushes low expectations, the principal should push high expectations!
  •  Public schools should be working and teaching models of a good civility and civics education.
  •  We can’t build societal “walls-of-protection” high enough to keep us safe from the young people public education has failed.
  •  Protecting students from child abuse by school staff members.
  •  The standards and rubrics for the effective initial assessment of a teaching position candidate.
  •  Designing interview questions that reveal the head and heart of a teaching position candidate.
  •  There are no “do-overs” in public schools for those things that we don’t get right the first time!
  •  The 2020-21 Coronavirus—a painful, teachable moment in exposing civic and public education’s leadership inadequacies.
  •  Educational Linguistic Integrity: Let the words of our mouths match our practice!
  •  If you find a love that will love you back during your time in the principalship, go for it!
  •  The practice of leadership questioning and the questioning of leadership practices.
  •  The not-so-good, the good, the great, and the highly effective school-building leader.
  •  For academically struggling or underperforming students, time is and is not their best friend!
  •  Seeking to help male students succeed in an often “hostile and antagonistic” public school environment. A not “robbing-the-hood” educational opportunity principalship practice.
  • We must seek to support and empower female students to gain access to leadership positions.
  •  Should parents with political, social, financial, class, and ethnic advantages try to take further unfair advantages?  
  •  The Self-Reflective Principal. (1).
  •  The Self-Reflective Principal. (2).
  •  The Self-Reflective Principal. (3).
  •  Schools should be all about the Benjamins, da Vincis, and Galileos—Creating a school with HIGH-E3STEAM values.
  •  A faithful leadership-calling question: “Am I looking for trouble, or is trouble looking for me?“.
  •  The pedagogy of musical chairs.
  •  The fine-tuning of your leadership moral compass through spiritual-scholarly readings.
  •  The urgency of practicing a pedagogy of insurgency!
  •  Learning to love and embrace staff and student’s eccentricities!
  •  A leadership wisdom that is grounded in knowing your students, staff, and, equally important, knowing yourself!
  •  How can we identify, professionally develop, and appoint more highly effective principals? —It’s as easy as 1-2-3!
  •  Where is your school’s annual S.W.A.G. attitude?
  •  Faith in Your Leadership is…
  •  Having Leadership Courage is…
  •  Practicing Leadership Charity is… 
  •  Offering Leadership Love is…
  •  Providing a Leadership of Hope is…
  •  Successful principals employ attracting success principles!
  •  The constant up and down motions of emotions that exist daily in the principalship.
  •  Childhood comic books and spiritual superhero stories can inspire real life supervision hero stories.
  •  The case for designing and implementing a school-wide educational Repairations Project.
  •  They call them “learn-less” Mondays, but Fridays can turn out to be extra “learning-less” bad!
  •  Some classic prospective staff interviews greatest misses.
  •  What is the school administrators best practiced and practical approach to the decision-making process in a crisis?
  •  Much good and helpful school leadership knowledge can be learned both inside and outside of the school building.
  •  There is no getting-around the need for a walking-around school leadership practice.
  •  Two superintendent’s personnel appointments considerations: (1) The “Peter Principle” promotional hypothesis; and (2) “Can one be a great principal without having been a great teacher?”
  •  The rewards of a rewarding Principalship.
  •  Has the concept of Professional Expertise lost its meaning in our modern world?
  •  I engaged my senior class as if they were embarking on a hero’s rites of passage journey.
  • The level of high: self-esteem, self-confidence, and self-expectations reveals the quality of a principalship personality; and the school’s performance possibilities.
  •  “Why is it that so many American-born public school students can’t read at grade level by the end of eighth grade?”  
  •  School Volunteerism: Getting good and kind people to donate their talents to enhance the talents of your students!
  • The Entrepreneurial Principal.
  • What is your Entrepreneurial Principal’s “elevator pitch”?
  • “You do know, principal, that it’s ultimately (in the end) all about the quality of instruction!”
  •  The Passionate Principalship.
  •  This page is for superintendents (principals can peek, I won’t tell).
  •  Lessons I learned in the Principal’s office that were either expanded upon or reinforced in the superintendent’s office. (1)
  •  Lessons I learned in the Principal’s office that were either expanded upon or reinforced in the superintendent’s office. (2)
  •  Lessons I learned in the Principal’s office that were either expanded upon or reinforced in the superintendent’s office. (3)
  •  And then there are those book writing lessons learned after leaving the Principal and Superintendent’s office.
  •  God’s gonna trouble the waters—God’s gonna calm the waters!  

I.   Ancestral Dedications.

II.  Grateful Appreciations and Acknowledgments and Book Tour Talking Points.