New teachers are usually given everything they might need but almost no help deciding what they need first. Handbooks. Curriculum documents. Schedules. Logins. Policies. Student records. Meeting dates. Advice from six different people, some of it contradictory. Then the school year starts. The information is necessary, but we end up with requirements and expectations without…
Do you know who it is in your school? Think about the person who always figures it out. The one who remembers the procedures nobody documented. Who smooths conflict before it reaches the office, catches the falling pieces before leadership ever knows they were falling. The one who stays late when the timeline is unrealistic,…
You made it to the end of another school year. And somehow, you feel worse than you did in February. The crash is what happens when a nervous system that has been running on adrenaline and obligation for ten months suddenly has nothing urgent left to hold onto. The urgency stops. You don’t. There is…
This time of year, leadership becomes highly visible. Hallways fill with awards ceremonies, countdowns, concerts, transition events, spirit days, and celebrations of growth. Schools are wrapping up the current year while simultaneously trying to build excitement for the next one. Improvement plans are being reviewed. Summer learning is being discussed. Staffing decisions are unfolding behind…
“What should we add?” When leaders see strain in a system, the instinct is usually to search for a solution. If outcomes are uneven, morale feels lower, or implementation appears inconsistent, the natural question becomes: “What should we add?” Schools are filled with improvement efforts born from this instinct because adding something feels active. It…
Some of the most relationally strong leaders I’ve worked with were also leading systems that quietly exhausted people. They cared deeply about students and staff and worked tirelessly to support them. Yet teachers became more and more overwhelmed throughout the year. The problem was what happened when relational leadership became a substitute for structural clarity…
As I was going through the complicated process of setting up a new website, I realized how similar the process was to my writing. Starting a website isn’t as simple as dropping some text on a page. In the age of social media, it also means creating handles and accounts across several platforms and connecting…
Sometimes you can almost see the light bulb turn on as awareness clicks into place. It was one of the last seminars of the semester and I had just led my student teachers through a reflective exercise about their experiences in the teacher preparation program. Jasmine had just realized that the relationship-building and other social-emotional…