Acharya Devo Bhav: by Dr. Nilesh Gopal das Joshi (best ereader for pdf and epub txt) 📖

staff members as often as possible.

 2. Great principals support their teachers at every turn—whether they are facing challenges with students, parents, or colleagues. They trust their teachers, have their backs, and always try to give them the benefit of the doubt.

 

 3. Great principals don’t spend much time in their offices. They are in the halls, in the classroom, at the bus stop, at the carpool, in the lunchroom, or wherever the action is. They engagewith those around them.

 4. Great principals do not try to do it alone. They involve others in the decision-making process whenever possible.

 

 5. Great principals pay attention to student achievement, and they spend a lot of time in classrooms. They promote strategic instruction and meaningful assessments. And, they ensure that data from those assessments inform teachers’ practice as they work to meet the academic needs of their students.

 6. Great principals intentionally foster a culture of collaboration in their school. They recognize that their teachers are stronger when they work together, so they create the conditions in the building that facilitate this process.

 

 7. Great principals are never content with the status quo. They have high expectations for themselves and everyone around them, articulating a bold visionfor their school and inspiring others to strive for more.

 8. Great principals understand the importance of staff morale and are intentional about creating good working conditions for their faculty.

 

 9. Great principals bring positive energy to work every day. They realize that positivity is a nonnegotiable quality when creating a school culture where students enjoy learning and adults enjoy working.

 10  .Great principals always make it about the kids. They work to build relationships with their students, and they ensure that the best interest of students drives every decision in the school.

 

 

As you get ready for a new school year, make it a habit to check this list at least once a day and ask yourself, “Which of these 10 tips will I make a priority today?”

 

 

 

Chapter 4 FIVE Essential But Overlooked Principal Responsibilities

 

5 Essential But Overlooked Principal Responsibilities 

 

 

 

 

 School Leaders

 

 

                            Reviewing lesson plans. Organizing school events. Making sure parents are happy. We principals have a lot of responsibilities, and it’s up to us to be able to manage them all efficiently. Here are five essential but overlooked school principal responsibilities you have to contend with to develop a successful school.

1. Creating a positive school culture

School culture is nuanced; there are many levels and implications to it. Ideally, the school is a place for children to learn as well as somewhere parents feel comfortable. Inviting parents into the school is a first step toward excellent school culture. Parents should feel welcome and that the invitation is genuine. If principals create systematic, integrated opportunities across the whole school where parents can be involved, parental engagement increases within the school. On the other side of the coin, teacher home-visits create a level of trust within the teacher-parent relationship. It allows for humanization, viewing each other as a person instead of “the teacher” or “a parent.” Positive communication enhances school culture.

2. Creating a long-term plan for student academic success

Student success is the coveted benchmark that proves the effectiveness of our efforts. With a finite number of days to see progress, sometimes teachers can lose sight of long-term success, and it’s up to us to create opportunities to remind people that it’s a marathon, not a sprint. Vertical curriculum within the school ensures that the standards are aligned from grade-to-grade and that students will be receiving the same quality education over time. Student portfolios, data, and analytics are good ways to see student improvement over time. Additionally, when students transfer to new schools, they can take this information with them for their new school to use.

3. Cultivating leadership in others

Has anyone ever asked you what you would do if you could clone yourself? My clone would double my productivity or at least do the less fun tasks. Surely we could all benefit from having a replica to work alongside of us. The truth of the matter is that that just isn’t possible. We can’t be everywhere and help with everything. So, you need to cultivate other leaders within your school. The teachers that you work with are professionals; give them autonomy to make certain important decisions. Run problem-solving workshops that will allow them to be more independent and to take more professional development classes to gain a broader scope of knowledge.

4. Managing people, data, and processes

The crux of most problems within schools is time management—not in the conventional sense of time management, where teachers need to pay attention to how long they’re running their lessons, but more in the sense of managing work-life balance. Can we spend an extra five hours after school every day creating the best lesson plans, professional development activities, and assessment reports? Yes. Does anyone necessarily want to do that? Probably not. It’s our job, as principals, to make sure that we’re making life as easy as possible for teachers with whom we work. Tools like Illuminate, KlassData, and Moodle can automate a lot of what goes into assessment, grading papers, and lesson planning. Little efforts like these save teachers hours of time per week, which can have a positive effect on the quality the of work environment.

5. Improving School Leadership

Arguably, two of the most important determiners of school success are teacher efficacy followed by good school leadership. We’re there to support our teachers who are on the front line directly working with the students. Our job is to provide teachers with the right tools to better teach their students and the platform to better work with their students. We’ll be successful as long as we keep the mindset that we’re there not only to help teachers be successful but, more importantly, to help students be successful.

 

 

Chapter 5 What makes an effective principal?

 

What makes an effective principal?

 

As the custodians of the next generation’s education, principals have one of the most busy and important jobs there are, yet the time and material resources to support this mammoth responsibility are often lacking.

However, as evidenced by many principals’ tremendous teaching and learning outcomes, some have found a recipe for success, whether it’s of their own initiative or from a collaborative effort.

So, what makes an effective school principal?

Renowned Finnish author, speaker and education expert, Pasi Sahlberg, said great leaders are also leading learners.

“If leaders don’t learn, then the learning in the organisations they lead is not likely to flourish,” Sahlberg told The Educator.

“Effective school principals take risks when they learn and try out new ways to do things better. This means that good school leaders learn how to fail, learn from their mistakes, and continuously improve what they do based on their lessons from previous experiences.”

Sahlberg said effective school principals don’t operate in a vacuum but rather reflect the values, beliefs, traditions, and cultures embedded in their schools.

“It is no wonder, then, that leadership cultures in schools vary greatly from education system to another,” Sahlberg said.

“We have known for decades based on international research that school leadership is one of the most important in-school factors that explain how well students learn in school.”

However, Sahlberg pointed out that effectiveness of leadership is often overlooked when trying to explain why some school systems perform better than the rest.

“For example, since the early 2000s, most of the efforts to explain Finland’s educational success in international assessments have paid only marginal attention to educational leadership,” he said.

“I would argue, however, that Finland has a unique culture of leadership characterized by the abovementioned features, just like Australia, that deserves to be noted.”

‘Effective principals relish in their role’

Beth Blackwood is CEO of the Association of Heads of Independent Schools of Australia (AHISA), said effective principals are passionate about “human flourishing”.

“They relish their role in helping students become the best humans they can be,” Blackwood told The Educator.

However, she pointed out that moral and mental toughness are also pre-requisites of the job. 

“The health of a whole community may depend on a principal’s courage to stand by their values. Effective school leadership is only possible when Heads are guided by a strong moral compass,” she explained.

“Heads will often sum up their leadership style as servant leadership. An important attribute of servant leadership is the readiness to learn – from the ideas of others as much as from one’s own or others’ mistakes.”

Blackwood said that in independent schools this is seen as evident in innovations in curriculum and co-curriculum delivery, student and staff wellbeing programs, technological adaptation and in the built learning environment.

“Readiness to listen to and learn from others is an essential skill for building staff engagement and creating team building. And perhaps this is the secret to effective school leadership today,” she said.

“A principal may tick many of the boxes of good management, but without relational skills they will not be highly successful school leaders. For effective leadership of intensely human endeavours such as schools, EQ is just as important as IQ.”

‘Seeing the bigger picture’

To Andrew Pierpoint, president of the Australian Secondary Principals' Association (ASPA) president, there are five key characteristics that all effective secondary principals have.

“The first is that are purposeful, making a difference to young people’ futures. They demonstrate education gravitas,” Pierpoint told The Educator.

Secondly, says Pierpoint, they are strategic. “This involves bringing together challenge, complexity, problem solving and diversity. They see the big picture,” he said.

“Principals must also be edu-preneurial; that is, being creative, educative, imaginative, dynamic and have political acumen.”

The fourth key characteristic Pierpoint cites is the need for principals to be collaborative.

“Leaders must work together to create positive futures and strong communities through relational trust,” he said.

“Finally, they are inspirational – positively influencing others, giving joy and fulfilment.”

'The effective leader is not alone'

South Australian Primary Principals' Association (SAPPA) president, Angela Falkenberg, said the effective principal "knows what is important and holds the line on the things that matter."

"Every school context is different, and the effective leader understands this and attends to what is important," Falkenberg told The Educator.

Another important trait of effective leaders, says Falkenberg, is being aware that they not alone and leveraging the available support when they require it. 

"They have access to the support they need, when they need it, be it staff recruitment, wellbeing or in creating the culture where all can experience psychological and physical safety," she said.

"An effective school leader believes that things can be better and finds creative