Beginning the Principalship
A Practical Guide for New School Leaders
The Ultimate Resource to cultivate self-awareness and excellence in Today’s Principals
A commitment to continuous improvement paves the road to true leadership. New and veteran principals who understand this will translate thoughts into sound decisions and inspire a vision that can nurture others. They will drive progress and invite innovation. These are today’s newest superheroes, leading by example and cultivating greatness in others.
But every superhero needs a mentor. In this updated bestseller, Beginning the Principalship, Daresh and Alexander offer intensive encouragement and help in a practical hands-on guide to help principals navigate the challenges of school leadership. The strategies and cases included here will inspire all school leaders and nurture their passion for the immense responsibility they have undertaken.
Practical Questions, Points to Ponder, and numerous examples in every chapter help foster reflection and collaboration to build a shared vision for campus improvement. Plus, discover how to:
- Drive student learning as the primary mission of the school
- Deal with others’ expectations of you as principal
- Master the technical skills needed to run an efficient school
- Create and clarify a personal professional growth plan
- Work effectively with the greater community and parents
- Celebrate instructional and non-instructional staff in a positive school culture
Don’t just survive your years as principal. Read this guide and thrive!
“Novice and seasoned principals, and new and seasoned administrators would really benefit from reading this book for skill building and improvement. Each chapter provides a wealth of information and has a space to record one’s own plan for self-improvement.”
Delsia Easley, Principal
Gadsden City Schools, Gadsden, AL
“I am disappointed that I didn’t own this book when I started as a principal. This book would have answered some of my pressing questions and guided the work I did my first few years. I will recommend this to any friend or colleague starting a new principalship.”
Kelly VanLaeken, Principal
Ruben A. Cirillo High School, Walworth, NY
The Fourth Edition will be based on prior work and will include additional information related to the following areas:
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The need for principals to be aware of safety and security for students, teachers, and others who enter schools each day.
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The rhetoric of referring to principals (beginning or experienced) as “instructional leaders” has largely become a faddish term used to suggest that good principals had to be more involved with monitoring instructional practices than simply managing school buildings. In the meantime, research by such contributors as Hallinger, Leithwood, and their colleagues has tackled the chore of identifying specific behaviors and practices that must guide the work of principals so that they linkage between good leadership and student learning can be made more clear. This material will serve as the basis of a new chapter (or an addition to an existing Chapter 3 of the new edition) which will include the current state of research on the reality of instructional leadership.
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Much has been written during the past three to five years about the practices and expectations comprising the ways in which “No Child Left Behind” legislation and CCSS is now being implemented. This fact will result in additional material to be included in Chapter 6 and Ch 8. Common Core State Standards and large scale standards- Even though not all sates have confirmed these and some are starting to balk, they are a major concern and issue.
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Linked to some extent with expectations of high performance on measures of accountability is the recent phenomenon of cheating by schools and districts with regard to the reporting of test scores to state education agencies, the public, and above all, to students. The new principal today is faced with an abundance of challenges related to ethical and moral judgment. The issue of ethical challenges that no doubt await the new principal may be included in the content of the current chapter on values (Chapter 11) and this may result in a shift of the current chapter on values to an earlier part of the book—perhaps as early as Chapter 2 or 3. On the other hand, making ethical and moral choices may warrant a completely new chapter toward the conclusion on the book as a kind of call to “thinking about the big picture as a school leader.”
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Technology and Leadership and preparation for Career and College deserve chapters unto themselves although they could be combined within existing content.
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Finally, material in the new edition will focus on the need for successful beginning principals to appreciate that they are increasingly being called upon to serve as spokespersons to a community much broader than the traditional groups of parents and boosters in the community. Instead, the principal of the future will be called upon increasingly to act in entrepreneurial and political matters to support the work of his or her teachers and staff.
Minor changes will be made in terms of the scenarios currently used to illustrate the content of each chapter.
