The Christian Academic Leader's Handbook

Everything is important. Only a tiny number of things matter. Read Focus 1 and Focus 2 (below) if that’s all the time you have. Ignore the rest till next year. Why? Because, as the Academic Leader, what matters to you is very clear. Teachers are your prime concern. As an exaggeration, we might say they are your only concern. 1. Support, nurture, encourage, require their growth. Wherever they are in their vocation / careers, they need to continue to grow. If they are brilliant pedagogically, they can spend time enhancing their ability to identify and support children’s social-emotional needs. If they are excellent at first-line counseling, they can delve more deeply into Scripture and embed that into their morning welcomes, their lesson plans, their conversations. If they are amazing at small-group coaching, maybe the ability to deliver a concise, impactful 10-minute lecture is the next step. Great at questioning? How about dealing with someone who has dyslexia? The teacher who is an inspiration in her classroom can learn to share the magic with her colleagues. There is always somewhere to grow. Always somewhere to go. 2. Craft your job advertisements with great care. Who you advertise for is who you get. Ask for an average teacher – don’t be surprised when average teachers show up for an interview. Really challenge the applicant to come to a thriving learning community committed to children’s success and you may have fewer applicants, but they will walk through the door with the right intentions. If you write your advertisements demonstrating that your faculty culture is healthy and moving forward in grace, skill, and effectiveness, maybe you will receive more applicants than usual. Know what you believe about children, about learning and teaching before crafting your ad. Know your mission and embed it into your descriptors. Unhappy parents are your second most important concern. Why second? Because if you have taken care of teachers, this will come up very rarely and usually only with teachers new to the profession, new teachers to your school, teachers who are failing to move on in their professional career trajectory. But until your faculty culture is robust in a healthy direction, your concern is to protect your teachers from unhappy parents. 1. Establish a relationship with parents from the first time they step foot in the school. If they are in your division, ensure you meet them (or take them) on the school tour in the interview process. 5. The deliberate and intentional connection of Academic Leader and parent is the glue that takes you through the inevitable problems and even disappointments. As Stephen Covey said, fill the bank account so that withdrawals are not devastating in the relationship. 6. Address issues when they arise – not later. It really doesn’t matter that the issue is going to be difficult. Tomorrow, it will be worse. With issues, now is always the best time. 7. Keep angry parents off the teacher’s back. Certainly, disputes may need to include the teacher in the conversation. Obviously. But there are also certain points at which parents who have extreme reactions / temperaments should be dealt with by you as Academic Leader without the teacher. Some parents can be headed off at the pass – with a potentially hostile query handled by you with confidence and good humor. Others want to take it past the “we’ve talked about this and come up with a strategy” point and keep the conversation going needlessly. They should waste your time, not your teachers’ time. Deal with these obstacles to what matters. 1. Discipline. NOT TIME! Your ability to focus on the two main concerns (teachers and parents) is not dependent on time. It is dependent on your ability to lead a highly effective faculty culture. Children’s discipline takes up way too much time in our schools. But we can all name the teachers who have “no” discipline issues year to year. Their children never show up in the office; they never are on the record. But the same child who behaves brilliantly in one class somehow does not in the next class. We know why that is. This teacher has the skills to keep children interested so that they are not tempted toward misbehavior. The other teacher does not. The answer is not to be a disciplinarian. The answer is to be a coach, a mentor, a demanding Academic Leader. One of the marks of a highly effective teacher is that they have no discipline issues. Discipline is a teacher’s issue, not the Academic Leader’s. 2. Clarity. NOT TIME! Teachers live complex lives and need you to be clear, whether they agree with you or not. They need you to say what you want and how you want it. They need to know what the guardrails are. When you provide predictability, they can work effectively doing their main thing: inspiring children. Yes, life is sometimes gray rather than black or white. But policy is black and white. Procedure is black and white. Lack of either is hard for teachers to live with. They will not respect an Academic Leader who fails in the basics of administration – setting rules. Make sure there is clarity and then explain why you varied from those guardrails in specific circumstances. 3. Clarity. NOT TIME! Parents want what’s best for their children. They are perfectly selfish about it and they should be. However, they cannot be allowed to run roughshod over policy / procedure. And by and large, they don’t want to. They also need clarity from you. Teach them their role as parents. You don’t expect blind trust from them. But you will also not accept bad behavior. Ensure they know what the rules are for them. 4. Distraction. NOT TIME! It’s easy as an Academic Leader to be distracted from what matters. Sometimes this is a lack of self-discipline. When will you answer emails? If it is when the messages come in, you will never have time for thinking. Is your open-door policy 24 hours a day or are there times you set aside for your own work and ask not to be disturbed? Are you easily set off course by the allure of something new? Is paperwork easier to do rather than deal with problems? Distractions are usually just that. As you identify and eliminate them, they cease to have any power over your prioritizing what matters. But sometimes they tell you that you are actually not as interested as you thought you would be in being an Academic Leader. Be sensitive to whether this is the right place for your interests and skills. 5. Time. YES, TIME! Not knowing where your time goes is the bane of excellent leadership. You know what matters and agree that this is where you should be spending your time. But time flows through your fingers and before you know it, it’s the end of another day without visiting a classroom, talking with a parent, subbing for a teacher so they can go and observe a colleague. Know where your time is spent. Write it down. Count it. Then control it. It is a great gift. Use it wisely.