In the Zone This Month: October 2008
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Checklist for Navigating the Wild Weather of the School Year
Greetings!
Whether you are a first-year or a veteran administrator, welcome back to another exciting academic year. We truly have an awesome career that allows us to start fresh every autumn. I sincerely hope you feel that way and your year is off to a great start.
I would like to take a minute and remind you of some key thoughts to keep in mind as your academic year takes flight. Some of the following may seem commonplace to you, but if not, here are a few things to move to the front of your inbox:
Pull out your job-related goals for the academic year. Most of us complete these in late spring and tend to forget about them until evaluation time rolls around. Keep them in a place that you can reference often. Not only will this be less stressful when your evaluation is due, it also allows you to collect timely data instead of stressful “panic” recall the night before your big meeting.
Dust off the teacher evaluation guidelines and present these to your faculty. They should be reminded of the expectations and this gives you an opportunity to create a schedule that will allow you to cover the evaluations fully and in an organized format. If not, it is very easy to let time slip by and feel pressured to squeeze too many evaluations into too little time.
Take a minute and look over your events calendar for the academic year. Schools are very busy and spending a few minutes with your common sense hat on will help alleviate scheduling conflicts down the road.
Whether you have a mandatory “walk-through” with the superintendent or not, take an hour and stroll your campus after the first few weeks of school. The building may be “showroom new” on the first day, but it is necessary to make sure it is holding up under pressure once the students make themselves at home. Look for dangerous spots that may become harmful to the students and places that could be eyesores to the community. Treat your building like your own home.
Remember your emergency drills and procedures. You should have two fire drills during the first two weeks of school and one every month thereafter. Three tornado drills need to be held in the spring and your lockdown drills should be rehearsed according to district protocol as well.
For a building principal, meetings are inevitable. Learn to embrace them and be organized in your approach. You will have district, building, and department meetings. If you plan for them in advance, you’ll be more likely to keep those times open and be more relaxed while sitting in those meetings. These times are key for you to hear the “hot topics”" swirling around you.
Communication is the key, so make sure you spend some time in the beginning of the year revamping your school newsletter. It might be a good idea to send out a timeline for those departments you wish to solicit articles. Like your job-related goals, keep your newsletter visible so you can add good information that your community might be interested in.
Testing, testing, and more testing. Whether you do this personally or delegate it to someone else, you need to make sure a tight calendar of events is created for the testing that will take place in your building during the academic year. The “to do” list for testing is very important and planning early will help avoid mistakes and oversights that are likely to happen when planning last minute.
In addition to these checklist items, the beginning of the academic year is always a good time to take a minute and reflect on what it means to be an effective leader. Elaine K. McEwan’s 10 Traits of Highly Effective Principals, lists the following traits. Keep these traits in mind and check yourself to see if you need more work in one area or another.
- The Communicator
- The Educator
- The Envisioner
- The Facilitator
- The Change Master
- The Culture Builder
- The Activator
- The Producer
- The Character Builder
- The Contributor
Again, I want to wish you the best of luck this school year and remember we are all in this together! Please feel free to ask if you ever have any questions or simply need to vent: E-mail.
Have a great year!
Dusty
Dustin W. Miller
Assistant Principal
Dublin Coffman High School
6780 Coffman Rd
Dublin, OH 43017
Reference: McEwan, E. (2003). 10 Traits of Highly Effective Principals. Thousand Oaks: Corwin Press.
