Tuesday, June 19, 2007

Summer School Registration

One of the tasks I was asked to do as one of the assistant principals at summer school was to contact parents to verify they had the correct information about summer school. Although this was a tedious job and often required multiple attempts, it was necessary to ensure all students who needed to attend summer school had the proper notification. Sometime leaders need to get their hand dirty and do some of the "grunt" work. It helps a leader know under what conditions they are asking their subordinate to work. Plus it also helps keep a leader humble and 'in touch' with the reality of what goes on in a school.

One of my beliefs is that every school leader should be required to teach one section of a course every 3-5 years. This helps a principal or central office person to experience the policies that he or she has put into effect. Sometimes, central office and principals are so far removed from the classroom that they don't have any idea of how their policies impact the daily routines of a teacher. Often, it is the "pile on" effect when different instructional leaders make separate and uncoordinated demands of teachers which leads to teacher burnout and morale loss. I also believe that by being in the classroom, the teachers see the leader doing the same daily regiment they have to do and when asked to do something else, the request is legitimized by their actions in the classroom.

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