Six Tips on starting a new position as a school principal (or starting fresh in your current job)
Woo Hoo! You finally landed that principal position. It’s kind of like that feeling when you first went to a new school. Will the other kids like me? Will I fit in? Will the school bully try to jam me in the locker. Ha! You might be starting your first administrative position or you’re trying to know how to answer that question of “what would be the first things you would undertake if you become the new principal”.
Having gone through waaaay too many interviews for principal positions in my life (and having been on the other side of the table with HR), I will try to give you a few insights that I feel will be helpful for you. I will say this: YOU are not Me: Take these tips as guidelines and tailor them to your own personality.
- Set up a time to talk with your total staff (teachers, counselors, librarians, paraprofessionals, office staff, custodians, etc…) Send everyone that works at your school (and I mean everyone – don’t make the mistake of not inviting someone and creating an enemy early on) a letter requesting a short (non-mandatory) meeting with you before school starts. They should call your secretary to set up a time. If you don’t get a response, then have the secretary call them. It’s good information to know who are the people who don’t think it’s important to meet with the new principal. You can file that away and you can still meet with those people after school starts.
- In the letter you send, you should ask for three questions to be answered A. What are the things that this school should be proud of. B. What are some areas that the school could improve upon? C. If you could be principal for a week or two – What would you change and why?
- Listen – you only get one chance to make a first impression. They want to see that you care and that you will follow through on what you say you will do.
- Speak with Central Office supervisors (depending on the size of the system you’re joining – it could be the Superintendent, the Director of Instruction, Content Specialists, Dir. of Special Education, etc…) – you might conduct the same exercise with them (or if that just doesn’t seem like it’s going to fly) then you could ask what priorities they would like for you to focus on to start the new school year. Some will make it easy – I remember when I first got appointed at a School Board meeting and the Superintendent pulled me aside immediately and gave me three immediate directives: A. Get the school fully accredited B. Get all the students to graduate on time and the one that he said came from the School Board members C. Fix the situation with all the “smooching” students that were in each other’s laps out in front of the school during lunchtime. I thought that was pretty clear!
- Set up a time to meet with parents. There should be three different options for these meet and greet times. For the parents who don’t work outside the home, or they work at night – you might plan a “Principal’s coffee” in the morning hours to meet and talk with parents, hear their concerns, and start sharing your “vision” – Do you have a vision?? Something to think about! There might be an afternoon or after school time to meet parents who come and pick up their kids from either school or after-school activities. Lastly, you should try to have a time to meet parents in the evening, for those who work regular hours and have to get home in time to fix dinner and then come back out. You might consider having at least one of these meet and greet sessions in a place other than the school. Some parents still have “flashbacks” to their days in school and they may not have been pleasant ones. Meeting at a non-threatening location such as the library or a fast food restaurant sometimes brings out people who would never visit you at your office.
- Lastly, I would then “sift” through all this information you have gathered and you should be able to generate a prioritized list that you will need to begin work on immediately.
Coming soon: How to set up your List of Priorities and how to “attack” that list efficiently!
What do you think of this “plan of attack” for when you land your first administrative position? What would you add or how would you do it differently? Add your comments! I would love to hear our thoughts.
“A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new” —Albert Einstein
