Part of our complete guide: How to Become a Principal. You are doing the visible work of the transition. You are building your leadership experience — the committee chairs, the grade level leadership, the PD facilitation, the district work that gets your name in front of the people who make hiring decisions. Your resume is…
Part of our complete guide: How to Become a Principal. You have the credential. You have the experience. Your resume shows leadership roles and measurable outcomes and the right combination of instructional and operational evidence. You have been a finalist twice and have not gotten the offer. And you are trying to figure out what…
The principal is the institution’s primary carrier. Every significant problem in the building eventually moves toward the person at the top of the building’s hierarchy — because that person has the authority to address it, the accountability for whether it was addressed, and the specific positional visibility that makes them the logical destination for everything…
The strategic plan says equity. The budget communicates something more specific about which schools the commitment to equity extends to in practice. The mission statement says teachers are the most valued professionals in the system. The working conditions those teachers navigate on a daily basis communicate a different institutional priority. The superintendent’s message to principals…
I want to start with the thing that nobody says in the hiring interview, in the educational administration certification program, in the professional development workshops designed for new principals, or in the mentorship conversations that happen in the early years if you are fortunate enough to have them at all. School leadership is one of…
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…
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…