Leadership Tools for School Principals


Book Description

Provides information on the skills and processes related to being a school principal.




Balanced Leadership for Powerful Learning


Book Description

What makes a great school leader? Contrary to what many believe, the answer is not tied to a certain kind of personality but to specific behaviors and actions that have positive effects on student achievement—behaviors and actions that any school leader can learn and put into practice. Over the last decade, thousands of school principals have done that, by implementing “balanced leadership,” an approach that recognizes the need to both maintain and challenge the status quo in order to move schools forward. Building on the analysis that was first reported in School Leadership That Works, the authors of Balanced Leadership identify the 21 responsibilities associated with effective leadership and show how they relate to three overarching responsibilities: * Establishing a clear focus—keeping the work and the conversations targeted on the issues that matter most; * Managing change—understanding how to skillfully steer through the challenges associated with making improvements, both large and small; and * Developing a purposeful community—creating a sense among all teachers and staff that they are invested in student outcomes and that they can make a difference. For each of these areas, key points and specific practices are described in detail and illustrated with stories from school principals who have successfully learned how to become great leaders. Step-by-step tools provide clear guidance for readers who are ready to make the same kind of journey—one with the potential to transform them and the schools they serve.




Reframing the Path to School Leadership


Book Description

This book uses a series of dialogues between a novice and a master teacher, and between a new and seasoned principal to view common challenges and to solve their most difficult problems. The authors demonstrate how framing, and then reframing challenges brings clarity, helps to anticipate problems, and leads to more comprehensive and powerful leadership strategies.




Helping Teachers Learn


Book Description

Drago-Severson presents case studies and examines strategies that help shape a school climate of teacher support, growth, and learning.




Leading for Professional Learning


Book Description

Support teachers with more effective instructional leadership Leading for Professional Learning offers field-tested guidance to help school leaders more effectively support teachers’ professional development. Leadership is crucial to professional learning, providing the necessary systems and structures that enable teachers to improve their own practice and in turn, improve student learning. With an illustrative case study, this book provides invaluable guidance, packed with practical tools, processes, and expert advice. Because each school differs in terms of strengths and needs, this book steers away from prescriptivism and shows you how to construct a support plan tailored to your unique context. Specific teaching and leadership frameworks guide you through the process of examination, discovery, and execution, equipping you with the necessary tools and insight you need to make positive changes for your teachers – and ultimately, your students. A must-read resource for principals, administrators, and other school and district leadership, this book helps you set your school on the path to continuous improvement. Determine your school’s professional learning needs Leverage existing support structures for the greatest effect Understand the role of leadership in sponsoring and following up on professional learning Ensure intentional changes in teacher practice and student learning Empowering teachers to improve their craft goes beyond merely offering opportunity; it requires collaboration with teachers every step of the way, a deep understanding of how best to support professional learning, a clear set of goals for both individual sessions and an overarching mission, and the necessary technical and relational support required to see these opportunities through. Written by experts from the University of Washington Center for Educational Leadership, Leading for Professional Learning provides real-world advice that has been proven effective in school districts across the nation.




Leaders of Learning


Book Description

For many years, the authors have been fellow travelers on the journey to help educators improve their schools. Their first coauthored book focuses on district leadership, principal leadership, and team leadership and addresses how individual teachers can be most effective in leading students—by learning with colleagues how to implement the most promising pedagogy in their classrooms




The Principal Influence


Book Description

Principals navigate the dynamic complexities and subtleties of their schools every day. They promote, facilitate, and lead efforts to achieve both tangible and intangible results throughout the school community. They fulfill a role that includes counseling, budgeting, inspiring, teaching, learning, disciplining, evaluating, celebrating, consoling, and a million other critical functions. As the principalship has evolved and grown, so have the expectations of it. With that in mind, ASCD developed the Principal Leadership Development Framework (PLDF). The PLDF establishes a clear and concise definition of leadership and includes clear targets that support the ongoing growth and development of leaders. Using the Framework, principals will learn to capitalize on their leadership roles: * Principal as Visionary * Principal as Instructional Leader * Principal as Engager * Principal as Learner and Collaborator The PLDF also offers 17 criteria of effective practice that allow leaders to focus on behaviors that have the greatest direct effect on the culture and status of learning and teaching. Coupled with the PLDF are tools for self-reflection that help principals identify and strengthen their reflective habits. Whether you want to develop your own capacities or support the development of a group of principals, assistant principals, or aspiring principals, The Principal Influence can help channel your efforts in ways that promote successful teaching and student learning.




A Principal Manager's Guide to Leverage Leadership 2.0


Book Description

Build better schools by training better leaders A Principal Manager’s Guide to Leverage Leadership answers the question that district leaders have been asking across the country: if Leverage Leadership is a roadmap for principals on how to lead great schools, what can principal managers and districts do to support them on that path? A Principal Manager’s Guide to Leverage Leadership offers a step-by-step guide to coaching principals to the highest levels of achievement, and it is rooted in studying the most successful principal managers and districts across the country. It can be used by principal managers/supervisors, superintendents, district and state leadership, and principal training organizations to accelerate the growth of principals in your community. Used in conjunction with Leverage Leadership 2.0, this book identifies the key actions principal managers should take to create exceptional school leaders, integrating the seven levers of leadership into district culture from the principal manager on up. With a particular emphasis on the two “super-levers” of data-driven instruction and student culture, this book is packed with advice, professional development materials, and real-world videos of principal managers in action, offering principal managers a valuable resource for bringing about change. A Principal Manager’s Guide to Leverage Leadership introduces a new unifying approach that is also highlighted in Leverage Leadership 2.0: See It, Name It, Do It. It gives you the tools to See it (see models of effective practice and identify gaps), Name it (name concrete actions for improvement) and Do it (provide means to practice these action steps until a principal masters them) With A Principal Manager’s Guide to Leverage Leadership in hand, principal managers, superintendents and principal training organizations can facilitate district-wide and state-wide transformations and hasten the benefit to the students and community as a whole.




The Leader in Me


Book Description

Children in today's world are inundated with information about who to be, what to do and how to live. But what if there was a way to teach children how to manage priorities, focus on goals and be a positive influence on the world around them? The Leader in Meis that programme. It's based on a hugely successful initiative carried out at the A.B. Combs Elementary School in North Carolina. To hear the parents of A. B Combs talk about the school is to be amazed. In 1999, the school debuted a programme that taught The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Peopleto a pilot group of students. The parents reported an incredible change in their children, who blossomed under the programme. By the end of the following year the average end-of-grade scores had leapt from 84 to 94. This book will launch the message onto a much larger platform. Stephen R. Covey takes the 7 Habits, that have already changed the lives of millions of people, and shows how children can use them as they develop. Those habits -- be proactive, begin with the end in mind, put first things first, think win-win, seek to understand and then to be understood, synergize, and sharpen the saw -- are critical skills to learn at a young age and bring incredible results, proving that it's never too early to teach someone how to live well.




Leading for Instructional Improvement


Book Description

Leading for Instructional Improvement Educational experts agree that quality teaching is the single most important factor in improving educational outcomes for all students. Teaching is a highly sophisticated and complex endeavor requiring deep expertise on the part of teachers and school leaders. This book shows how teacher, school, and district leaders can cultivate the expertise of teachers to deliver high quality instruction for all students. Leading for Instructional Improvement captures the nationally acclaimed work conducted by the Center for Educational Leadership at the University of Washington in its effort to improve the quality of teaching and leadership in schools across the country. The book provides extensive practical guidance grounded in theory and research, along with powerful stories and examples from classrooms, schools, and districts. Many of the tools, protocols, and frameworks contained in this book can be accessed electronically by visiting the Center for Educational Leadership website at www.k-12leadership.org. Praise for Leading for Instructional Improvement "This book offers insights that are invaluable to educators who seek to enhance teacher effectiveness now. The ideas presented are practical and applicable to schools in a variety of settings." —PEDRO A. NOGUERA, Ph.D., Peter L. Agnew Professor of Education, Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Development and executive director, Metropolitan Center for Urban Education "A deep and thoughtful look at how the issue of expertise is cultivated. Seizing upon their Center's research-based instructional framework, the authors provide important insights and tools." —DR. BEVERLY HALL, superintendent, Atlanta Public Schools "In this age of intense focus on how we evaluate teachers, we have to remember that any evaluation is only as good as the evaluator. This extremely useful book provides an excellent roadmap for how principals can become more effective in the most important aspect of their work, instructional leadership." —JERRY D. WEAST, Ed.D., superintendent of schools, Montgomery County Public Schools, Maryland "Fink and Markholt offer practitioners a guide to effective teaching. Leading for Instructional Improvement asks us to heed the lessons within and support the kind of teacher education that will improve student achievement for today's schools and those of tomorrow." —BARNETT BERRY, president, Center for Teaching Quality