Principal Shadowing

The best part of the internship was shadowing the principal. Like we model for our students, it was good to see a typical day for a principal. While I was not able to shadow for a whole day, I was able to select items that I wanted to participate in. These included attending Board Meetings, Parent Teacher Association, Intervention and Referral Services, IEP/504’s, budget planning, hiring, discipline and supervising sports events. These activities showed what events a principal participant in when they are not observing teachers or attending workshops. Watching the principal interact with parents and students was a great way to build relationships with stakeholders. These activities took place throughout the school year. I was able to shadow the principal at concerts and school dances. At concerts, he would introduce the director but main importantly thank the Board of Education for their continued support to the extracurricular activities. During shadowing, I was also able to observe a classroom teacher and conduct an observation. The principal
and I meet after and compared what we both observed and discussed the observation steps including pre and post observations.

Reflection
As I reflect on shadowing, I value the efforts of the principal's secretary.
Every minute of each day is filled with meetings, teacher observations, professional development and other events. While not all principals may get a secretary, it is still valuable to develop a schedule that utilizes time. Having a schedule that is shared with the secretaries allows them to know where the principal may be at all times. I also got to look at the backend of emergency drills. The principal’s secretary emails out to all staff that there is a drill. Sometimes I was told that a red sign in posted on the main doors in case a parent was to walk in. This year, the principal also utilizes the cameras to ensure there are no people in the halls. The principal also had decided to make all drill unannounced, this way everyone gets better practice. During drills, the principals must read and abide by the emergency procedures that are in
place.

Relationship to the Standards: With regards to shadowing and the standards, I can say that I have observed the principal partaking in some aspect of each of the standards every day. More particularly, with regards to the activities that I worked fully on, the principal and I focused on standards two and six. With regards to standard two about ethics and professional norms, my principal excel’s in this area. When he was an assistant principal, he would always make sure that everyone was treated fairly as best as he could. He explained that he would try to make everyone happy, but at times that can’t happen. During the last negotiations, he fought to have a more even distribution for the new staff. Mr. Duckett is very transparent with his staff as he will tell them what he expects and what they need to change to meet the goals of the district. This was evident at the Board Meet where he openly talked to the Board about what is not currently working at the school and how he plans to change it. As for standard six, professional capacity of school personnel, I enjoyed seeing the process of hiring a teacher. While I have not been on many teacher interviews myself, it was nice to see how different teachers present themselves. The hiring and retaining effective teachers is a hard task at ECS as usually the newer teachers volunteer for everything and gather many skills to add to their resume. Once they have a few years of experience, they move on to bigger districts. The principal knows that this happens, however, he plans for this by having more parties involved in other aspects of the school. He retains effective teachers by providing them with the adequate support they need. This also works with respect to budgeting. Working with the business administration, she explains that if two teachers who are at the top of the pay scale retire, they are able to hire three teachers instead. However, that does not happen as the extra funds are used towards the rising cost of special education.