Personal Narrative: An Interview With An Administrator

I interviewed an individual who has a variety of experience as an administrator. This individual has worked with both high school and middle school students as either a Principal, Assistant Principal or Athletic Director. He has also provided support to elementary staff and students when needed.
Some key points that I achieved from the interview is that regardless of how organized and precise your schedule seems to be, you must have flexibility within your schedule. Along with flexibility, also comes the strength of multi-tasking. As a leader, he communicated how it is important to stay organized and keep a running checklist. The checklist, is a life-saving tool that he relies on when he is out and about walking the halls. During these moments, he seems to be walking the halls, but really he is accomplishing multiple tasks with students and staff.
Such as, this is the time he uses to communicate with teachers on follow up questions, issues that need to be resolved or, concerns that he may have seen in lesson plans, an email, and/or something he noticed when he walked past a classroom.
My individual expressed as an instructional leader, it is critical to keep up to date on all new laws and school requirements. This is accomplished through a lot of self-study. He noted, that he is always reading journal articles, books related to education and curriculum. It was pointed out that if a free moment arises that is usually a good time to find something to read. In order to make sure that he is meeting all of the district’s curriculum needs, he has to rely on and utilize the teachers and the teacher’s strengths within the building. For example, even though he feels confident looking at and evaluating school curriculum it is very important to also include teachers and their expertise in every curriculum area. This then led into him expressing how important it is to build relationships and learn how to use the expertise of all staff members throughout the building. This could include anyone from one of the cooks to a veteran teachers of twenty five plus years. It was proclaimed that without a strong staff he would not have a successful building. Over the years, he has relied on staff members to help him set up and plan parent nights, host different activities, review curriculums and state standards, create and make statements about data, and even help create school wide rules.
One of the first things I was encouraged to complete was to build relationships with my entire staff. Then to always remember to never hesitate to ask staff members for their honest expert advice when needed. One of the key tools that he uses to help with quality control is data. As a beginning principal, he learned that by using data to help guide his thought process, he was able to learn a lot about the district quickly. He also said, “By letting the data guide your thinking, you can learn what questions to ask at staff meetings, individual meetings and so forth.” He explained that he relies on data daily to make daily decisions.
I have learned that as a future administrator, a key priority I need to focus on is building positive relationships with all my staff members.
Through positive relationships, I will be able to reach out and gain trust from the staff, along with staff members building trust with each other. This will help to create an environment where staff can professionally help each other through the minor day to day challenges and provide them opportunities where they can problem solve for themselves and each other. I will also use data to support my thinking so that staff members can have a visual of how I am leading the district. In hopes, this will help me be able to spend less time on quality control and more time on teacher capacity and student achievement. I will make time and find ways to utilize staff member’s strengths within the building to help lead and monitor daily data, test achievements, district goals and so forth. After the staff members are able to compile great deals of information, this will allow for me to have time to look at the big picture of the district and make the necessary decisions as I see
fit.