TL;DR:
- Make new hires feel welcome and make sure you have them added to school resources.
- Review expectations and make sure the school is set up for success second semester.
- Evaluate the school culture and get feedback from others.
As we prepare for and begin the second half of the school year, this is a perfect time as a school leader (or member of the leadership team) to take a 360° view of our school culture, reflect, and assess if we can improve as we go into 2nd semester.
As you start 2nd semester, just as teachers do in their classrooms, administrators can reset school culture and improve upon it. Click To TweetA few months ago, I wrote about how late hires need to feel welcomed from the first day they start working in your building. After winter break, you may have 5 or more new staff members starting. If you didn’t get a chance to read my blog, check it out here. I would add to the checklist to remember to add them to the phone/staff contact list and school website and give them a mailbox. If you had some staff start in the fall after school started but didn’t get all these things done, please ensure they’re added. Don’t let 2-3 months pass with your new hire not having these things! My blog post from last spring, Valuing Your Staff, has many tips about proactively listening to staff and taking their ideas into consideration.
School Culture and Hallway Expectations
As you start 2nd semester, just as teachers do in their classrooms, administrators can reset school culture and improve upon it. To avoid students getting into fights, cussing, bullying, and many other things students do without staff supervision, it’s imperative that you are visible as an administrative team, have school security in the halls, and have expectations for teachers and/or other non-instructional staff to be in halls during passing periods.
Staff, PLC, Observation Meetings a Different Way
Consider having walking meetings for these rather than sit and get. If you’re at a school that has a track, a group of teachers can walk and talk. When a school leader has a mobile office (laptop on a cart and spends most of the day outside their office in classrooms or in the hallways), it is easy to shift these meetings to another arena than the traditional one. Ask your teachers if you observe what they prefer. If they prefer to have them in their classroom, meet them where they are.
Do They Know the School’s Vision, Mission, and Values?
Outline a clear vision, mission, and values so visitors to your school and new staff/students know what it is. It should be front and center on your school’s website. Also, promote positive things that are happening on campus, not just game results. Whether or not parents are complaining about your school culture or there’s negativity on social, you can head it up by being proactive with the positive. Remember to regularly survey your staff about how they perceive the culture in the building. This will give you honest feedback from those who are in the classroom daily.
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Be a Visible Leader
I cannot state enough the positive impact of getting into classrooms on a regular basis. My goal, and usual practice for the last five years, has been getting into 500 classrooms a year. I got this idea from listening to the Principal Center Radio podcast with Dr. Justin Baeder and from reading his book, Now We’re Talking! 21 Days to High-Performance Instructional Leadership. If you haven’t connected with Justin (@eduleadership on Twitter) or visited The Principal Center website to find out about his many Instructional Leadership offerings, I would highly recommend you do so! I have personally completed two of the Principal Center’s certifications. One of them was the Evidence-Driven Classroom Walkthrough Certification, which became available to take earlier this year. Making #500Classrooms a practice shows how much you care about what the day-to-day happenings in the building are and greatly improves school culture. You can start this anytime!
Remember to have a growth mindset and don’t feel like you have to try everything at once! It’s important to revisit what worked well (and what didn’t) as we wrap up 1st semester and make goals with your leadership team. You can always lean on colleagues in the Teach Better Admin Mastermind (Tuesdays at 8 AM CST) for support. We have a wealth of discussions around this and other topics of the month that leaders encounter on a day-to-day basis.
References:
Don’t Leave Late Hires in the Dark!
Baeder, J. (2017). Now We’re Talking! 21 Days to High-Performance Instructional Leadership. Bloomington, IN: Solution Tree Press.
About Dana Goodier
Dr. Dana Goodier has 23 years of experience in education. She has taught World Languages and English and worked as a middle school administrator. She completed her doctorate degree (Ed.D.) in Educational Leadership early 2020. For her dissertation, she researched reasons parents were opting their students out of high-stakes testing at middle schools and how that affected the district accreditation rating.
She often speaks at conferences, providing educators with techniques to minimize off-task behavior and to increase time on task. Goodier is the host of the “Out of the Trenches” podcast, which features educators who share their stories of resiliency. She is also the author of the book, “Out of the Trenches: Stories of Resilient Educators.”
Follow her on Twitter @danagoodier and visit her website at: www.danagoodier.com
