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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Bildung
- Sprache: Englisch
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.
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Seitenzahl: 342
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018
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CONTENTS
Cover
Praise for A Principal Manager's Guide to Leverage Leadership 2.0
Title Page
Copyright
Video Content
Additional Materials
Dedication
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Introduction
A Paradigm Shift: From Administration to Instruction
A “Practical Guide”: What You'll Find in the Book
Who should Use This Book—and How
The Path Ahead
Part 1: What to Coach
Chapter 1: A Primer on Leverage Leadership
The Seven Levers of Leadership
See It. Name It. Do It.
How to Lift the Levers
Conclusion
Chapter 2: Identifying the Right Action Steps
Criteria for Principal Action Steps
How to use the Leverage Leadership Sequence of Action Steps for Principals
Case Studies—Try It Yourself
Conclusion
Part 2: How to Coach
Chapter 3: Coaching Data-Driven Instruction
Set the Table: A Primer on the Conditions for Success District Wide
Monitor the Learning
Coach by Example: Lead Data Meetings
Coach by Doing: Monitor Student Work
Conclusion
Chapter 4: Coaching Student Culture
Train the Rollout
Monitor Culture
Coach by Walking
Coach by Meeting
The 30-Day Playbook
Conclusion
Chapter 5: Coaching Teams of Principals
Establish the Norm—One School
Observe Each Other—Collaborative School Walkthroughs
Practice Together—Team Coaching
Conclusion
Part 3: Systems
Chapter 6: Finding the Time
Build Your Weekly Schedule
Defend Your Time
Manage Your Tasks
Conclusion
Chapter 7: A Superintendent's Guide to Creating the Conditions for Success
Maximize Time in Schools
Build Data-Driven Instruction Systems
Provide Flexible Support for Turnarounds
Conclusion
Conclusion
Part 4: Professional Development
Chapter 8: Workshops: Overview and Highlights
Data-Driven Instruction for Principal Managers
Leading Student Culture for Principal Managers
Index
End User License Agreement
List of Illustrations
Figure 1.1
Figure 2.1
Figure 3.1
Figure 3.2
Figure 3.3
Figure 4.1
Figure 6.1
Guide
Cover
Table of Contents
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Part 1
Chapter 1
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Praise for A Principal Manager's Guide to Leverage Leadership 2.0
“If your goal is to become a more strategic practitioner in your conversations, learning experiences, and mentorships, you must have A Principal Manager's Guide to Leverage Leadership 2.0 in your library! It provides educational leaders at all levels with practical tools to accelerate learning outcomes for students. This book emphasizes what we already know: the real work is done before you even step foot in the classroom! This book has transformed the way I support my school leaders.”
—Celeste Douglas, assistant superintendent, District 18, New York City Public Schools
“Paul has few peers in the crusade to ensure school leaders have high-fidelity, high-priority practices critical to grow the capacity of their teachers so they can ensure student growth. His latest book fills another void: a clear, detailed map principal supervisors and coaches can use to travel further down the road toward student growth. Inspiring…and our school leaders are so thankful!”
—Rosemary Perlmeter, founding director, Master's in Urban School Leadership, Southern Methodist University (SMU); cofounder, Teaching Trust; founder, Uplift Education
“Working with Bambrick-Santoyo and the content of this book has been a defining event in my professional life and has made me stronger and better (faster). Following the guidance and protocols set forth in A Principal Manager's Guide to Leverage Leadership 2.0 helped me strengthen my practice and build the capacity of the leaders I support. Now principal managers have a common language and tools to have a laser-focus on improving the teaching and learning, which can profoundly affect student achievement—as it has for us.”
—Jeanine Zitta, network superintendent, St. Louis Public Schools
“Whether you are new to supervising principals or have been in the role for years, Paul's work is an invaluable resource to ensuring school leaders get the coaching, tools, and guidance needed to accelerate their schools and take your network of schools to the next level.”
—Sean Precious, high school instructional superintendent, Denver Public Schools
“The call has been finally been answered. For years principal managers have been searching for the book that helps them prioritize what they should be doing, when they should be doing it, and how often that should occur to have the maximize impact on moving student achievement at schools. Paul has answered these questions and so many more in the most practical and easy-to-understand way. Studying successful leaders across the county, Mr. Bambrick-Santoyo has found a way to make their practices, schedules, routines, and techniques so visible on the pages and in video clips. The trainings and coaching I received from him have shifted my practice more than any other professional development received in my seventeen years in education. The resources in this book changed the way I approached my work in the most profound way possible. My leaders and I were not the same after integrating these practices.”
—LaKimbre Brown, chief of schools, Lorain City Schools, Avon Lake, OH
“Paul's powerful insight empowers leaders to overcome challenges and achieve results in manners they did not know was possible. Our partner districts and school systems across the country demonstrate the student impact of leveraging Paul's learning—and this book on principal managers will ignite system changes and results at an even greater scale.”
—William Robinson, executive director,Darden/Curry Partnership for Leaders in Education
“Our journey with Paul Bambrick-Santoyo began five years ago, when our school district had six out of the ten worst-performing schools in the state. Paul's first book, Driven by Data, became our district bible for school turnaround, followed soon after by the implementation of the seven levers shared in Leverage Leadership. Guided by the expertise and experience Paul shares in his books, teachers and leaders have transformed our school district. Now, with this latest book Paul shows more clearly than ever how educators can drive learning through true instructional leadership. I highly recommend this book to anyone who strives to lead a school not as an evaluator, but as a coach.”
—Sandy Coroles, superintendent, Ogden School District, Ogden, Utah
“Over the years, Paul Bambrick-Santoyo has written a playbook for the world's most difficult job: school and school system leadership. In A Principal Manger's Guide to Leverage Leadership 2.0, he shares this playbook and—more important—explains exactly how to use it. If you and your team care about teaching and learning, you'll want this book and you'll use it every single day.”
—Charlie Friedman, founder and head of school, Nashville Classical Charter Schools
A Principal Manager's Guide to Leverage Leadership 2.0
How to Build Exceptional Schools Across Your District
Paul Bambrick-Santoyo
Copyright © 2018 by Paul Bambrick-Santoyo. All rights reserved.
Videos © 2018 by Uncommon Schools. All rights reserved.
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Certain pages from this book and all accompanying online materials are designed for use in a group setting and may be customized and reproduced for educational/training purposes. The reproducible pages are designated by the appearance of the following copyright notice in the gutter margin of each page:
Taken from A Principal Manager's Guide to Leverage Leadership 2.0: How to Build Exceptional Schools Across Your District by Paul Bambrick-Santoyo. Copyright © 2018 Paul Bambrick-Santoyo. Reproduced by permission of John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All video clips copyright © 2018 by Uncommon Schools, Inc.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for.
ISBN 978-1-119-49664-9 (pbk); ISBN 978-1-119-49667-0 (ePDF); ISBN 978-1-119-49665-6 (epub)
Cover image: © Veer
Cover design: Wiley
Video Content
How to Access the Videos
Here is an overview of the video clips for your quick reference.
Identifying the Right Action Steps (Chapter 2)
Clip
Technique
Description
Page
1
See It and Name It—Manager Feedback Meeting
“What is the purpose of plan before practice?”
Jeanine Zitta works with Principal Glass to analyze a gap in the facilitation of the principal's feedback meetings, ultimately prompting the leader to identify a final action step to implement in the immediate future.
28
Coaching Data-Driven Instruction (Chapter 3)
Clip
Technique
Description
Page
2
See It (Exemplar)—Weekly Data Meeting
“This is a meaty standard.”
LaKimbre Brown leads her principal team to unpack a third-grade math standard around multiplication.
72, 107
3
See It (Gap)—Weekly Data Meeting
“Using the language of the standard…”
Juliana Worrell works with principal Jacobi Clifton and his third-grade teachers during a weekly data meeting to determine the highest-leverage gap, utilizing the charts of the standard and the exemplar to target and fix the conceptual misconception.
108
To access the videos online, please visit
http://www.wiley.com/go/pmguide
Clip
Technique
Description
Page
4
See It and Name It—Weekly Data Meetings
“I would add something else.”
Juliana Worrell asks principal Na'Jee Carter to analyze the standard and the exemplar, prompting Na'Jee to fully unpack the characteristics of his own written exemplar in order to prepare him to lead the same data meeting with his teachers.
108
5
Do It (Plan)—Weekly Data Meetings
“Now it's time to spar.”
Juliana Worrell plans a reteach lesson side by side with Na'Jee Carter, and then they compare their plans to determine strengths and next steps.
108
6
See It and Do It—Coach by Doing
“What are the actions that you would want to see replicated?”
Juliana Worrell leads principal Andrew Schaeffer to fully unpack his school's exemplar for guided reading before determining the highest-leverage gap across several guided reading classrooms.
110, 111
7
Name It—Coach by Doing
“Reflect on the process: your key takeaways are…”
Juliana Worrell pauses her modeling of a literacy weekly data meeting with principal Na'Jee Carter to ask him to reflect on key takeaways and name his action step for his upcoming data meeting.
112
8
Follow Up—Manager Feedback Meeting
“I am going to send you the third-grade analysis meeting.”
Julie Jackson works with principal Jennifer Wong-Den to list all of the time-bound next steps at the conclusion of the meeting.
113
Coaching Student Culture (Chapter 4)
Clip
Technique
Description
Page
9
*
Do It—Practice Clinic
“Take one minute to read the technique.”
Hannah Lofthus's principals lead a morning practice clinic to improve teacher actions before the school day begins.
128
10
Do It—Roll Out to Staff (Principal Clip)
“Handshake, high-five, or hug…”
Tera Carr begins her student culture rollout by presenting the model to her staff.
131
11
See It and Name It
“Here's what you are going to see me do.”
Hannah Lofthus presents a model for her principal to compare to his own implementation, prompting the principal to name both his coaches' action step and his own.
131
12
Do It (Coach by Walking)
“…and then we are going to go upstairs and do it.”
Jesse Corburn asks principal Ashley Anderson to practice the planned real-time feedback before their school walkthrough.
137
13
Do It (Coach by Walking)
“ Whisper to him that you're going to watch for…”
Jesse Corburn provides Ashley with several opportunities to practice real-time feedback aligned to her action step.
137
14
See It and Name It (Coach by Meeting)
“What is the gap between [what you described as the ideal] and what we saw today?”
Hannah Loftus pushes her principal to identify the exemplar procedure for her dean to follow when receiving a student, and then they determine the gap in the current implementation coupled with a final action step.
139
15
Do It (Coach by Meeting)
“She'll be able to implement that within the next thirty minutes.”
Hannah Loftus practices the principal action step with her leader during a feedback meeting.
140
*
To access the videos online, please visit
http://www.wiley.com/go/pmguide
Coaching Teams of Principals (Chapter 5)
Clip
Technique
Description
Page
16
See It and Name It—Leading Leadership Teams
“In your own words, tell me your action step.”
Teresa Khirallah works with leaders in Dallas to determine the highest leverage gap to close in their own implementation of weekly data meetings.
167
17
Do It (Plan)—Leading PD
“Who can share a piece of feedback they just got from their partner?”
Jesse Corburn asks a group to write exemplar responses to prework questions during PD.
168
18
Do It (Practice)—Leading PD
“What did they do well, and what could they improve?”
Kelly Dowling leads a PD with instructional leaders, giving clear directions before practice with several opportunities for specific feedback.
170
Additional Materials
Here is quick overview of additional materials available online.
Resource
Description
Principal Manager Quick Reference Guide
Key one-pagers and guides to support the coaching of principals; these can be printed and formed into a small reference guide for each principal manager:
Leverage Leadership Sequence of Action Steps for Principals
Principal Manager Check-In one-pager
Managing Principals to Results one-pager
Weekly Data Meeting one-pager
Giving Effective Feedback one-pager
Real-Time Feedback one-pager
Student Culture one-pager
Leading PD one-pager
Get Better Faster Scope and Sequence of Action Steps
Leverage Leadership Quick Reference Guide for Principals
Key one-pagers and guides for every lever; these can be printed and formed into a small reference guide for each principal:
Weekly Data Meeting one-pager
Giving Effective Feedback one-pager
Real-Time Feedback one-pager
Student Culture one-pager
Leading PD one-pager
Get Better Faster Scope and Sequence of Action Steps
Get Better Faster Coach's Guide
PD Session: Data-Driven Instruction for Principal Managers
All the materials needed to lead a professional development session for instructional leaders on data-driven instruction
Session plan
PowerPoint presentation
Handouts
One-pagers
Implementation Materials for Data-DrivenInstruction
Key handouts to support the implementation of data-driven instruction, including:
Network dashboard sample
School dashboard sample
Managing Principals to Results one-pager
Weekly-Daily Data Meeting one-pager
Principal Manager Check-In one-pager
PD Session: Leading Student Culture for Principal Managers
All the materials needed to lead a professional development session for instructional leaders on student culture
Session plan
PowerPoint presentation
Handouts
One-pagers
Implementation Materials for Culture
Key handouts to support the implementation of student culture, including:
30-Day Playbook
Student Culture Rubric
Student Culture one-pager
Implementation Materials for Finding the Time
Key handouts to help principal managers find the time for what matters most, including:
Weekly Schedule Template
Leverage Leadership Evaluation Rubrics
Leverage Leadership Instructional Leadership (non-principal) RubricLeverage Leadership Principal Evaluation Rubric
To access the videos online, please visit
http://www.wiley.com/go/pmguide
For leaders of leaders: your children are my children.
Acknowledgments
I didn't really know what was possible for principal managers until I got a chance to see each of you in action: Tamara Acevedo, Kevin Anderle, Nikki Bridges, Laura Brinkman, LaKimbre Brown, Lamont Browne, Dan Caeser, Colleen Colarusso, Brian Conley, Denise de la Rosa, Monica Dilts Nurrenbern, Tatiana Epanchin, Hope Evans, Charlie Friedman, Laura Garza, Jessee Haight, Shara Hegde, Sondra Jolovich-Motes, Teresa Khirallah, Ben Klompus, Hannah Lofthus, Ben Marcovitz, Doug McCurry, Erin McMahon, Adam Meinig, Gina Musumeci, Sultana Noormuhamad, Sabrina Pence, Ciji Pittman, Sean Precious, Jesse Rector, Eric Sanchez, Stacey Shells, David Singer, Billy Snow, Chi Tschang, Rebecca Utton, Nicole Veltze, Alison Welcher, Jeanine Zitta, and Josh Zoia. This book wouldn't have happened if not for the work you're doing all across the country. Thank you for modeling for me and for inspiring me to write this book.
Jesse Corburn, Juliana Worrell, Kelly Dowling, Serena Savarirayan, Maya Roth Bisignano, Katie Yezzi, and J.T. Leaird: we wouldn't have been able to take these ideas far and wide without proving them at home first. Thanks for every moment watching video, perfecting practice, and discovering new ways to be better. The seeds of your work are bearing fruit.
Julie Jackson: sixteen years working side by side—now that is a gift I will always cherish.
Alyssa Ross: on the spur of the moment I asked you to take on the challenge of working on not one but two books simultaneously, and you did not shy away. Thank you for the creativity, the sparring, and the writing companionship. Here's to a continuing ride on the wave of writing.
Brett Peiser, Josh Phillips, Diane Flynn, Laura Lee McGovern, Sara Batterton, Sam Messer, Sam Tweedy, Jacque Rauschuber, Young Rhee, Michael Ambriz, Anna Hall, Tara Marlovitz, Doug Lemov, Erica Woolway, and Angelica Gonzalez Pastoriza: you have supported me even when I have been difficult and overdemanding, and you quietly transform everything I do from dream to reality. Thanks for being the wind that makes flight possible.
Lindsay Kruse, Kathleen Sullivan, and Norman Atkins: you saw a dream with me, and the Leverage Leadership Institute was born. It is hard to believe how far we've come! Keep soaring.
David Deatherage: you were the lone ranger on this one, from the early principal manager working groups to the filming and cutting of footage of managers in action. Thank you for never losing your passion and enthusiasm—it is contagious!
Ana, Maria, and Nicolas: you have my heart—always. Follow your dreams (you already have).
Gaby: twenty-one years and it still feels fresh and new. I'm so excited to spend another twenty-one years together—and then some. Here's to warmth, bright skies, and getting old together.
Thank you to each and every one of you. This book is a tribute to you all.
About the Author
Paul Bambrick-Santoyo is the chief schools officer for Uncommon Schools and the founder and dean of the Leverage Leadership Institute, creating proof points of excellence in urban schools nationwide. Author of Driven by Data; Leverage Leadership; Great Habits, Great Readers; and Get Better Faster; Bambrick-Santoyo has trained more than twenty thousand school leaders worldwide in instructional leadership, including multiple schools that have gone on to become the highest-gaining or highest-achieving schools in their districts, states, and/or countries. Prior to these roles, Bambrick-Santoyo cofounded the Relay National Principals Academy Fellowship and spent thirteen years leading North Star Academies in Newark, New Jersey. During his tenure at North Star, the schools grew from serving fewer than three hundred students to over three thousand while at the same time making dramatic gains in student achievement. North Star's results make them among the highest-achieving urban schools in the nation and winners of multiple recognitions, including the US Department of Education's National Blue Ribbon Award. Prior to his work at North Star, Bambrick-Santoyo worked for six years in a bilingual school in Mexico City, where he founded the International Baccalaureate program. He earned a BA in social justice from Duke University and his MEd in school administration through New Leaders from the City University of New York—Baruch College.
Introduction
By any metric, John Williams is an iconic creator of music. In a career that spans five decades and counting, Williams has composed some of the most unforgettable film scores of all time, including six Star Wars films, three Harry Potter films, and the chill-inducing “dah-dah—dah-dah” of Jaws.1 His notes shaped these stories into the masterpieces we know them as today, making his mark on cinematic history as indelible as his mark on music.
This legendary skill of composing is combined with Williams's skill in leading others to perform. He served as the conductor of the Boston Pops Orchestra for thirteen years, and continues to occasionally serve as conductor for the Pops, at the London Symphony, and at the Hollywood Bowl.2 These performances are extraordinarily popular—not only because of Williams's fame as a composer but also because of his work as a conductor. He excels at leading other musicians to perform memorable music—sometimes his own art, but sometimes music crafted by others—in a breathtaking way.
Step back and think about Williams's impact in the moment he lifts a conductor's baton. He doesn't play a single instrument; he doesn't offer a single bit of sound to what is produced. Yet there is no performance without him. Even as he hands the task of making the music over to other artists, the audience depends on Williams to thrill them with wonder, terror, or delight.
The same is true of every principal manager. You're no longer in the classroom, and you're no longer in one school every day. You're no longer welcoming a student body in the morning or holding regular feedback meetings with teachers, but you work daily to make sure every school succeeds.
Just like a conductor, you no longer make the music—but there is no performance without you.
Core Idea
As the conductor, you no longer make the music, but there is no performance without you.
As principal managers, we can sometimes lose sight of the power of the conductor's coaching. We can get so mired in the complexities of multischool leadership that we can feel distant and ineffective—and sometimes that feeling becomes a reality. Yet a new generation of principal managers shows that this does not have to be the case: people like LaKimbre Brown in Washington, DC; Hannah Lofthus in Kansas City; Teresa Khirallah in Dallas; Jeanine Zitta in St. Louis; and Serena Savarirayan and Juliana Worrell in Newark, New Jersey. All of them had significant success as principals, but what is more remarkable is the success they now have as managers. Between them, they have worked with nearly every type of school—small and large, district and charter, schools in turnaround and schools moving from good to great. In each context, they have changed the lives of whole communities of students. No matter what the odds or difficulties, principal managers can indeed make the difference in the schools they manage, creating amazing music by guiding and coaching the musicians.
How do they do it?
That is what this book is all about.
A Paradigm Shift: From Administration to Instruction
What makes education effective? Great teaching.3 What makes great teaching possible across an entire school? Great principals.
Leverage Leadership 2.0 was built to codify the practices of the most effective school leaders across the country. But in the process of working with schools leaders in every type of district, another question emerged: What does it actually look like to make great schools possible at scale? More specifically, what do the best principal managers do?
For most of us who have risen to the role of principal manager, we got there by being a good principal. But just as being a good student doesn't prepare you to be a good teacher, neither does the work of being principal fully prepare you to manage other principals. Think again of John Williams: the skills he engages when he stands up to conduct are fully different from those he uses when he plays an instrument.
Among principal managers whom I've met along my journey, a common refrain is, “Nothing prepared me to be a principal manager. In all honesty, I don't really know if what I'm doing is making any impact.” In large measure there is a void in the field: there is little training offered to guide us in being principal managers. That's where this book comes in.
Just as student learning won't change if we don't improve instruction, our work as principal managers won't change until we make the shift from being administrators to serving as instructional leaders. Why? Because at its core, being an instructional leader means believing that principals can get better. They aren't born great; they can grow into becoming great. This entails a paradigm shift: moving from simply monitoring or evaluating school leaders to coaching them.4
Core Idea
The purpose of principal managers is not to monitor or evaluate school leaders but to develop them. Good principals don't have to be born great; they can become great.
Obstacles to Effective School Management
As promising as this shift sounds on paper, there are many obstacles that make it challenging to put into practice. Here are a few of the most fundamental ones.
A fixed mindset about schools—and school leaders.
For many of us who were principals before we became principal managers, we never got any feedback as a principal. We found our own way. That experience can leave us believing that the next generation of principals can do the same. Once they know about teaching, surely they can figure out how to lead, right? This mindset leads to deprioritizing giving principals the feedback and information they need to grow. It can also lead to a more dangerous proposition: the belief that a struggling principal will never be able to get better, and thus that principal's school is destined to fail. Only when we shift from this fixed mindset to a growth mindset about our schools' leaders can we begin to change our actions to coach principals to mastery. (The terms
fixed mindset
and
growth mindset
were coined by Carol S. Dweck in her seminal book
Mindset: The New Psychology of Success.
)
A focus on compliance and administration.
One of the largest stumbling blocks principal managers face today in their journey to becoming instructional leaders is the sheer volume of noninstructional work placed on their shoulders—nearly the exact problem principals face at the school level. All too often, principal managers find themselves focused on a host of tasks far removed from directly improving instruction and learning: attending district meetings, learning the latest around compliance, planning a budget or managing non-school-based staff, just to name a few. This work is not going to disappear, and often principal managers are evaluated more for getting that work done well than they are for their schools' results. Such tasks have led some to argue that a great superintendent or principal manager should focus on being good at these things and leave instructional leadership to principals and coaches. However, what I saw in exceptional principal managers was an insistence on being instructional leaders. No matter the other responsibilities they had on their plate, a focus on teaching and learning always rose to the top.
Firefighter syndrome—letting the urgent crowd out the important.
When you lead multiple schools, there will always be something urgent that pushes you to abandon every well-laid plan. You have multiple “fires” to extinguish—from disciplinary hearings to personnel challenges to occasionally things far worse. You end up rushing from one fire to the next, yet you arrive unprepared and ill-equipped to address them. And with each fire, instructional leadership falls even further into the shadows.
Flying at too high an altitude to effect real change on the ground.
Many times principal managers try to manage from far away. They create plans and roll them out, but they do not follow up with “boots on the ground” to actually manage, model, and monitor the implementation. Redefining management as on-the-ground support makes the difference between running great schools in theory and making that a reality.
Inertia that supports the status quo.
All of the challenges I've described here lead us to a sense of inertia whereby we can start to lose hope that any other way is possible. And given that we don't have a model of an alternative, we get stuck—mired in the work of administration.
The Seven Levers: A Pathway to Instructional Leadership
The leaders highlighted in this book face the same obstacles, but they overcome them. They follow a core set of principles that allow for consistent, transformational, and replicable growth across their schools. They start by taking advantage of the common language and tools of Leverage Leadership 2.0 to create a platform on which they can form and develop their principals for success. These are truly levers that answer the core question of school leadership: What should an effective school leader do?
The Seven Levers
Instructional Levers
Data-driven instruction.
Define the road map for rigor and adapt teaching to meet students' needs.
Instructional planning.
Plan backwards to guarantee strong lessons.
Observation and feedback.
Coach teachers to improve the learning.
Professional development.
Strengthen culture and instruction with hands-on training that sticks.
Cultural Levers
Student culture.
Create a strong culture where learning can thrive.
Staff culture.
Build and support the right team.
Managing school leadership teams.
Train instructional leaders to expand your impact across the school.
By focusing on these levers and leveraging the power of a common framework, the principal managers highlighted in this book were able to dramatically improve the performance of their school leaders—and themselves. But how do you coach principals around these levers? This book will offer you the tools to do so and, in turn, take your schools to new heights.
A “Practical Guide”: What You'll Find in the Book
In the pages that follow, we will offer a concrete, step-by-step guide to becoming an excellent principal manager. The book is organized into four sections:
What to coach:
a primer on the seven levers of leadership (for those who are not deeply familiar with
Leverage Leadership 2.0
) and an introduction to the trajectory of actions steps for a principal's development
How to coach:
a deep dive into coaching principals, both one-on-one and in teams, with a particular focus on the two “super-levers” (the most important for student achievement): data-driven instruction and student culture
Systems:
how to build your schedule and create district-wide conditions for success that maximize your time on instructional leadership
How to coach the principal managers:
a full set of materials—session plans, PowerPoints, and handouts—for you to roll out training for other principal managers on your team
Within each of these sections, we use the See It, Name It, Do It approach to present the content of the book.
See It: Videos and Testimonials
Videos
In the online materials that accompany this text, we've included a selection of video clips of principal managers in action, working directly with their principals. This is a gold mine for you, as there are few, if any, resources like this available for principal managers. These videos are not staged, nor are they videos of managers' interactions with their strongest principals. These videos show principal manager interactions with all types of principals: struggling principals, new principals, and those at every level.
In this sense, we bring these schools to you: every chapter is accompanied by high-quality video of the lever it presents, broken down to portray both the components of success and how it looks as a whole. Seeing exactly what the leaders in this book do, and how they do it, will make it possible to replicate their actions in a way that reading alone never could.
WATCH Clip 2: Brown—See It (Exemplar)—Weekly Data Meeting http://www.wiley.com/go/pmguide
Throughout the book, this symbol indicates that a given online video clip is crucial to the work and to the reading itself. Although it is possible to use this book without watching the accompanying video, we doubt it will be as effective. Watching exemplars of great leadership in practice will provide insights that words will not. These are also at the foundation of the training materials in Chapter 8 and online (more on that presently).
Name It: Core Ideas and One-Pagers
The power of a common language to describe best practices is impossible to overstate. Here's how this book serves to provide one, naming the most important actions that lead to the results we need the most.
Core Ideas
Throughout the text, these Core Idea boxes will pull out the most important key ideas from each section.
Core Idea
If standards are meaningless until you define how to assess them, then principal management is directionless without district-wide quality interim assessments.
The goal of each core idea is to make the complex ideas in this book as simple and as memorable as possible. If you take nothing else away from this reading, take these—and share them with those you work with!
One-Pagers and Summary Guides
We have routinely received feedback that the one-pagers and summary guides to specific skills are among the most useful tools in the book to implement best practices across your school leaders. These one-pagers aren't invented from thin air. Carefully built and concise, they simply name the key words and actions we observed in thousands of hours of observations and video clips of the most effective principal managers. They consolidate the most important information to remember about any topic onto a few pages. The following is an excerpt from the Principal Manager Check-In one-pager in Chapter 3.
Principal Manager Check-In
A Guide for Developing Principals One-on-One
Do It: Plan, Practice, Follow Up
Do It
Plan before practice:
Script the changes into upcoming plans (for meetings or observations)
“Where would be a good place and time to implement this next week?”
“What are all the actions you need to take/want to see in the teachers?”
“Take three minutes to write up your plan.”
Push to make the plan more precise and more detailed.
“What prompts will you use with teachers that we can practice today?”
“Now that you've made your initial plan, what will do you if [key challenge: e.g., resistant teacher]?”
(If struggling to make a strong plan) Model for the leader and debrief.
“Watch what I do and say as I model __.” “What do you notice about how I did __?”
Perfect the plan.
“Those three steps look great. Let's add __ to your [script/meeting plan].”
This book includes key guidance in every chapter and full one-pagers and summary guides online. Print them out and use them as a daily guide in your work—and distribute them among your peer principal managers so that they can do the same!
Do It: Materials to Make It Happen
It is one thing to have a guide; it is another to be able to roll this out. A Principal Manager's Guide to Leverage Leadership 2.0 includes all the same tools that the leaders in this book use to lift the levers in their schools.
Action Planning
Throughout each chapter, we give you the space to evaluate the quality of your own leadership and to plan when and how you'll put these ideas into action. This sort of self-evaluation and strategic work is what makes meaningful change possible. In boxes labeled “Stop and Jot” or “Action Planning Worksheet,” you'll find sets of questions designed for you to assess your current principal management, choose the resources from the book that will be most helpful, and plan your first action steps. Here is an example.
Pulling the Lever: Action Planning Worksheet
Coaching Principals on Data-Driven Instruction
Network/District Assessment
Review the district conditions for successful implementation of data-driven instruction (as discussed in the first section of the chapter): Which are the key actions you need to take as a network of schools?
Self-Assessment
Review the Leverage Leadership Sequence of Action Steps for Principals (embedded throughout the chapter; the full list can be found at the end of
Chapter 2
, and a print-friendly version is in the online appendix).
Which action steps do you want to target this year as you develop your principals?
Planning for Action
What tools from this book will you use to lead your schools? Check all that you will use. (All are available online unless noted otherwise.)
Network dashboard sample
School dashboard sample
Managing Principals to Results one-pager
Weekly Data Meeting one-pager
Principal Manager Check-In one-pager
PD on data-driven instruction for principal managers
PD on data-driven instruction for principals (see
Driven by Data
)
Other:
