Education Week - July 17, 2019 - 7

Advice for New Principals: 'It's All About How You Treat People'
Running a school can be exhausting and overwhelming,
especially in the first year. Staff Writer Denisa R.
Superville spoke to three experienced principals who

What's the best advice you received in
your first year as a principal?
ARMSTRONG: You are going to have to make
some tough decisions in this business, but it's
all about how you treat people. I can bring
you in and give you a reprimand, but it's how
I give you the reprimand.
Two of our kids, [one of their parents] just
passed away, and we are going to the visitation and funeral. These are kids that have
actually just left us and are going to high
school next year. But it doesn't matter. Some
principals might be, 'Oh, they are going to
high school, I don't have to go to that funeral.'
No. It's all about how you treat people.
Every single decision that I make in this
building, I make it through the lens of what's
best for kids. That means that as an adult in
this building, I can't be lazy. I feel like some
principals and other school leaders make
decisions based on what's best for them, not
what's best for kids. What's best for kids
is that I am visible, I am in the building, I
am walking around, that I am popping into
classrooms.
HENSLEY: Joe Dudash was the first principal I ever worked for as a teacher. When I
started to go down the administrative path,
he said here's my advice to you: Be where the
action is. By that he meant be in the hallways, be in the classrooms, be at events, be in
the community to learn the culture to have a
firsthand understanding of what's going on.
PARK: It was just how important and
critical establishing a culture of learning,
improvement, and collaboration is.
Before you can do any substantial work
around student outcomes and teacher
practice, creating that culture and
buy-in among folks-that learning and
improvement-is what we do. We are
learners. We are constantly in a cycle of
improvement and we do it together. We
collaborate. That is truly baseline, most
important.

What advice do you have for new
principals on how to avoid being
overwhelmed by the job?
ARMSTRONG: Just the fact that in this role,
it's impossible to do it all. And that's going
to be your first inclination-to try and do it
all. You'll try, and it won't work, and you'll
be exhausted. And you'll get to a point where
you realize that you'll have to begin trusting
people by giving them opportunities to lead.
Micromanaging doesn't work. You have to
begin to develop trust in people, where you
can give things to people and move on.
PARK: This profession can be so consuming.
You can always be doing something for a
child and a family. So learning [that] it isn't
a sprint, it's a marathon; you are building
a cathedral not a shack. Cathedrals take
a hundred years to build, even more. And
if you are going to stay in this for the long
game, you need to be doing good work, you
need to retain that sense of urgency ... but
also make space for the things that feed you.

HENSLEY: One of the things that I do with
my staff at the onset of each year is that I
let them know what my parameters are:
that I am available to you through email,
text messages, or phone calls. However, if
in the evening hours, it's not an emergency
and it can wait to tomorrow, let's wait until
tomorrow and deal with that. For two
reasons. One, it's respectful of my time to
step back from the role. And it's saying to the
teachers, 'It's OK for you to step back and
take that time for yourself.' It's a culture that
you build within your school.

What words of wisdom do you have for
a first-year principal?
HENSLEY: One thing that really comes to
mind-and it is something that I know I've
struggled with, but I've learned the deeper I've
gotten into the career-is just the concept of
being emotionally vulnerable with your staff
and having the courage to be who you are and
to not let a top-down model drive what you
think administration should look like.
I think that's very hard for a first-year administrator, who comes in feeling that I have
to draw strong lines between [the principal
and staff]. If you really want to get buy-in
and build those relationships with people,
you are going to have to be vulnerable with
them. You have to know your people [and]
what's important to them to gain those feelings of trust, buy-in, and leadership within
your organization. [When] people trust in
what you're doing, the productivity will be
greater as well.
PARK: [Finding a mentor is] the most
impactful thing. That also helps with not
letting the job overwhelm you-it's finding
that wiser person who is a few years ahead of
you, who has been through it.
Making sure that you make the time and
space for your professional people, but also
your personal people, and commune with
them frequently, so that you are maintaining
your sense of self and values. And making
sure that you are making space for the activities that feed you-whether it's practicing
mindfulness or yoga or cooking or the things
that keep perspective.

What resource(s) would have made a
difference for you in that first year?
PARK: I think the one thing [that would have
made a difference] is a dedicated mentor
or coach, which I didn't get. Someone who
might have been observing my meetings
with teachers or my leading a professional
development and giving me active feedback
after the observation. I created my own
network and my own mentorship.
If you don't have a coach or a mentor assigned to you or somebody that you think
you can learn from, you need to go out and
find who you admire the most, who is doing
the most inspiring, visionary, cutting-edge
things, and highly effective things, and go
and make friends with them.
ARMSTRONG: For me, it's having mentors. I
wouldn't even say veteran principals. If you're

offered candid advice and lessons they learned, as well as
what they wish they had known in the first year on the job.
These interviews have been edited for brevity and clarity.

KEVIN ARMSTRONG
PRINCIPAL, DUPONT-HADLEY
MIDDLE SCHOOL,
OLD HICKORY, TENN.

a first-year principal, you can get a secondyear principal, a fourth-year principal, and
a 10th-year principal and learn just as much
from all three. Because I think you need
someone that just has another year or two
above you. They are still kind of green, too,
and they get it. It just happened to them last
year or the year before.
Veterans may not be able to recall what it
was like in the first year. And even if they do,
it was like 10 years ago. It was just a different
time. I would even say having mentors
outside of education. You need people that
are kind of slightly oblivious to what you do,
so that when you talk to them, they come at
it from a fresh angle-just somebody that's
going to help you through stress. ... You need
those folks in your life, too. I call it mutual
mentors, people that you check on just as
much as they check on you. You are kind of
pouring into each other.

What do you know now that you wish
you'd known in your first year or before
you started your first principalship?

MELISSA HENSLEY
PRINCIPAL, CENTRAL HIGH
SCHOOL,
WOODSTOCK, VA.

SUE PARK
HEAD OF SCHOOL, YU MING
CHARTER SCHOOL,
OAKLAND, CALIF.

HENSLEY: One of the things that came to
mind is that the position has no power. People
say, 'You are the principal, tell them to do
that.' And I'm like, it really doesn't work like
that. It took probably about two years to learn
why these folks won't do what I'm asking
them to do. They're not going to do what
they're not going to. I can sit here or be out
in the classrooms and say this will work and
this will really be effective. But it's not that
way. The best way that I have found-and
that I wish I had really known this-was that
it's OK to share that leadership role. Not only
is it OK, it's imperative for success to breathe
in a building.
ARMSTRONG: You go in to do this job having
weaknesses. Some of us have never dealt
with the financial aspect of a school. I'd say
the vast majority of [principals] have not.
That's huge: dealing with bookkeepers, and
auditors, and signing checks, and signing
requisitions and all these other things, and
this huge budget-we have a $3 million
to $4 million budget here-and hiring
everyone. To think that you're in charge of
programming $3 million to $4 million, it can
be overwhelming at times. But you get used
to it. With my math background, I like the
money part, because I can budget. I am fine
with that. But others aren't.
You don't know what you don't know. You
kind of learn by messing up. It's that fail-fast
mentality. You've got to fail fast. Because
you're not going to know everything, and
you're going to make mistakes, and you can't
beat yourself up. You just have to learn from
it and move on. Document the error, and the
next time it comes up, you're like, 'Wait a
minute, this happened a couple of weeks ago,
what did I do? I remember. Don't do this.' So
you learn.
Coverage of leadership, summer learning, social and
emotional learning, arts learning, and afterschool
is supported in part by a grant from The Wallace
Foundation, at www.wallacefoundation.org.
Education Week retains sole editorial control over
the content of this coverage.

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Education Week - July 17, 2019

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