Abstract
Principal leadership is a role that revolves around quickly changing tasks. In a broad sense, the ability of a principal leader to communicate clearly, build culture, and empower others has positive benefits that lead to school progress. Along with these skills, another skill to consider mastering is plan development and follow-through. Besides skill-related tasks, taking time to meet with staff to connect on a personal level and empowering staff to continue their professional development is a great method for building work culture, just as the leader would expect staff to connect with students. This is one technique for modeling how one would like his or her staff to interact with students. Lastly, this chapter will focus on some lessons learned from the pandemic, specifically revolved around leading through unknown territory, being comfortable with being uncomfortable, and focusing on the fundamentals of the organization.
TopThree Lessons Learned
This section contains information about the three lessons learned from a high school principal. The lessons in this section are provided from the perspective of a high school principal that leads a multi-district charter school in a large metropolitan.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Virtual Learning Environment: A learning environment in which there is no face-to-face contact with students and learning lessons and curriculum are completed online.
EXCEL Model: Is a practical tool that provides a clear path to communicate with others – not only verbally, but also in writing. The model is not intended as a checklist, but as a method for clearly organizing thoughts and communicating with others.
Impactful Skill: An impactful skill is the skill for a person to mitigate stress caused by a stressor coupled with a timely situation.
Brick-and-Mortar: A traditional school environment in which students attend classes and hear lectures from teachers face-to-face in a school building.
Hybrid Learning: A learning environment in which there are components of virtual learning and brick-and-mortar learning.
Live Lessons: A live lesson is a lesson that is presented in real time. The lesson may be face-ot-face or in a virtual medium (e.g., video conference).
Unknown, Unknown: A phenomenon in which those involved and those not involved do not have a clear path to solve a problem.