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June 11, 2018
ASCD Blog

Reflections of a First-Year Principal

    Leadership
    Reflections of a First-Year Principal - thumbnail
      One of the greatest things about education is that with each new year, comes an opportunity to start new.  For some educators, this means returning to the same position with a renewed charge, but for others, it is a new position entirely.  This past school year, I had the opportunity to be in a brand new position.  After having spent my entire career in middle-level education, this year I became a principal, and it was going to be in an elementary building.  As with any position, it is important in year one to build relationships with students and staff, understand how the building works, and continually work to positively impact the climate and ultimately the culture of the building.  In my opinion, those things are a given when it comes to a new position.
      For me, going into the year, I knew it was going to be a fun challenge.  Any change can be a challenging task, but by knowing our challenges, asking the right questions, and then reflecting on the process, we put ourselves on the path towards success.

      Understanding Your Challenges

      Whether it is your first year in a new position or your thirtieth, you must recognize and accept that there are going to be challenges.  Being a first-year principal, I had to make sure that I was looking at challenges through a positive lens.  For me, this helped me stay focused on what is best for the students in the school. Looking at challenges through a positive lens, we allow you to recognize that challenges are simply opportunities to grow.
      As I transitioned into my new role, I was very overwhelmed at what I perceived as challenges.  There was a day last summer when I was just getting settled, and email after email, question after questions kept coming in, and I did not know where to begin or even how to respond to some of them.  Each one that came in, I started putting full effort into trying to solve, but quickly hit dead end after dead end, which ultimately led to frustration.  This is when I started writing down all of the challenges that I was facing.  As a first-year principal, this may have been the number one thing that helped me survive.  Creating a list provided the structure that allowed me to stay focused.  Being focused allow me to be strategic and efficient in my working, which helps me navigate these challenges, and helped guide me to solutions.
      One hurdle that I had to overcome in creating my list is understanding that I should only write down things that are negatively impacting in one way or another a child’s ability to receive the best education possible.  These are the challenges that we need to focus on.  These are big picture items that need deep reflective thought  Yes, there are annoyances and complaints that we may have.  These went on my to-do list as they were something that can be easily corrected.  Challenges are deeper.
      In the day to day aspect of being a school principal, it is too easy to minimize our challenges as it is not typically easy or fun to address them.  By having a list of my challenges easily accessible, I always had a point to reflect from.  This was a great starting point for me.  I will caution that it can and will be overwhelming at times to see your list of challenges, but if you keep the mindset that the goal of this is to move forward.  I also challenge you to continue to be critical of your list to see if it really is a challenge or something that can be transferred to your to-do list.  I also want you to know that it is okay to step away from your biggest challenges.  That is why you write them down, so you can come back to them.  We cannot let every challenge we face slow us down from doing the good work on a day to day basis.

      Ask Questions

      Whether you are focusing on your challenges, or just working on the day to day aspects of being a building leader, you must understand the power of a question.  Questions are what drives our learning as professionals.  Questions are what allows us to have deep conversations and hopefully leads to the understanding of different thoughts, and collectively grow to understand situations better.  It is through questioning, that we will be able to tackle our challenges and move forward.
      Throughout this year, it became clear to me that people do not mind questions, but they do get guarded at times when they feel they are being questioned.  As a building leader, this is something to be mindful of.  This is why it is important to continually ask questions.  You want to build a culture of questioning, that leads to conversations.   This is hard to do, but it is important to support that professional dialogue.  The challenging questions are always going to be difficult to answer, but if you have built the culture of questioning, so people can expect that questions are going to be asked.  This way, when a challenging question comes, the focus can be on the question itself, not the fact that a question was asked.

      Lastly, Reflect

      I walk a fine line on a daily basis of being reflective and overly critical of myself.  This was a struggle for me in my first year as a principal.  I had an opportunity to work with great kids, great teachers and staff, and in a great community.  I wanted everything to be absolutely perfect.  It was not.  I had my challenges, failures, and successes.  The thing that kept me going was the reflection.  Continually asking myself the tough questions and answering them honestly was what propelled me to grow this year as an educator.  As a first-year principal, I found it valuable to seek out those to bounce ideas off of.  Find other administrators (in your district and out), identify teachers that will be honest with you, and talk to as many people as you can.  As I found out during my first year, you will not be able to answer all of the tough questions.  You will not be able to overcome all of your challenges.  What you can do is, question.  What you can do is, identify challenges.  What you can do is, reflect.  If you do this, you and the school in which you serve will continue to grow and positively impact kids.

      Mike Janatovich is the assistant principal of Harmon Middle School in Aurora, OH, and an ASCD Emerging Leader.

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