Let me tell you what principal burnout recovery does not look like. It does not look like waking up one Monday with renewed purpose and a fresh perspective after a good weekend. It does not look like a leadership retreat that sends you home with a full notebook and a short-lived enthusiasm that disappears by…
Every year, schools across this country watch their principals walk out the door. The numbers are staggering and the explanations are always the same: it is a pipeline problem, they say. A preparation problem. A compensation problem. It is not. It is a burnout problem. And until the people talking about principal turnover are willing…
It starts around 4pm. Or maybe after dinner. A tightness you can’t quite name — a low hum of something that wasn’t there this morning. The weekend isn’t technically over yet, but Monday is already in your chest. If you are a principal, you know exactly what this feels like. You have probably felt it…
It’s 10:47pm. You made every decision that needed to be made today. You held it together in every room. And now you’re lying in bed and your brain is still going. The parent email from this afternoon. The teacher who left your office looking defeated. The budget line that doesn’t add up. The call you…
There is a question the AI era is going to answer. It is not going to ask it gently, and it is not going to wait for anyone to be ready. The question is: what has been filling the role? Not in the sense of who holds the position. In the sense of what the…
There is a version of the AI transformation I want to name directly because I think it is the version most likely to happen quietly, without anyone deciding to let it happen. A principal adopts AI tools. The tools work. Administrative tasks take less time. More hours open up in the day. And the principal…
The AI conversation in education is producing a specific anxiety in a specific group of people. Not the anxiety about replacement — most experienced principals have moved past that or are learning to. The anxiety underneath it: the suspicion that the profession is entering a period of transformation and the people most responsible for leading…
There is going to be a moment — if it has not happened already — when an AI-generated recommendation lands on your desk and you know it is wrong. Not wrong in the sense of technically incorrect. The data it processed was accurate. The pattern it identified was real. But the recommendation is wrong for…
If you have been a principal for any real length of time, you have a graveyard. Not a literal one. But a professional one. The initiative that arrived with a district-wide rollout, consumed two years of professional development, and quietly disappeared when the next superintendent came in. The platform that was going to transform how…
I want to talk about something that most principal professional development avoids because it is uncomfortable: the school improvement plan that does not improve the school. You know this pattern. The data review in August that identifies the priority. The goal that goes on the CIP. The initiative announced in September. The professional development in…