For Those Thinking About Opening a Charter School....

This article nails it: http://charterinsights.blogspot.com/2009/11/its-no-fun-being-charter-school-leader.html

Certainly, starting a charter school has been much, more more difficult than I anticipated, particularly for the reasons mentioned above. Still, it is a labor of love, similar to parenting. You can't enter into either thinking about what you will get from them; rather, one must have a service orientation:: What can I give to this situation? Unfortunately, so many of us are overworked, overtired, and overstressed that it feels as if we don't have that much to give. Our charter school board, for instance, is having a difficult time recruiting folks to serve with us. Many couples are delaying parenthood and choosing to have less children when they do decide to start having kids. It's an odd world. I am not sure if it's because we are all just more selfish (the "me" generation hypothesis), or just overstressed and inundated with knowledge/technology, or if there is just too much complexity in our world where peace is rare and moments of quiet far too fleeting.

Do School Principals Matter?

When I first started teaching, I didn't pay much attention to my school principal. He was an older man, kind yet strict, and I mostly just wanted him to leave me alone so that I could teach. The following year, I moved to a different school, one that was getting a brand new principal. My first impression of her was that she was a hard woman, inflexible and demanding. I wasn't alone in my assessment, and many teachers were unhappy with her leadership. In retrospect, many years later, I find this unfair as she really did push us to do different, creative things that focused on student learning. I think her personality, though, got in the way, and she neglected to court us or get us to see things from her perspective. She was just the boss, kind of intimidating, and we did whatever we could to avoid being noticed by her. She didn't stay long--the atmosphere was just too hostile to nurture a good fit--and soon we had her opposite--a principal who stood on his head the first day of classes (literally) as students filed into the school. Kids loved him. Teachers loved him. We had so much freedom to do whatever we wanted to do. We tried some really innovative things under his loose guidance. For instance, we instituted "mini-courses" where students took two weeks off from classes in the spring to pick a course of their own choosing. It was a tremendously successful experience for teachers and students alike. I was able to take kids from multiple grades hiking and rock climbing each day, without a regular schedule to bind us. Thus, I came to believe a good leader had a hands-off approach, was kind, and trusted his teachers.

And then, many years later, I founded my own school. And I realized how critical the role of the school leader was. A school leader is essential for ensuring the efficient and safe running of the school, so that teachers and students can focus on learning. Again, it highlights another example of conceptual change, just by being forced by the situation to see things from a different perspective. I wonder if we ought to use this "perspective change" more deliberately. I am sure it's being done in some workshops somewhere, but I don't see it happening on a regular basis. However, if teachers were made to walk a mile in the principal's shoes, and the principal had to go back in the classroom for a day to teach all day, what changes might result?

Back to the hands-off, "fun" principal--in retrospect, I am not sure he was better for the school than the previous principal, except in cultivating a positive school culture (not an unimportant goal). However, I am sure many of us were less rigorous in our approach to teaching than under the prior principal. I am reminded of my undergraduate years. I attended New College in Florida, a liberal arts school with no grades. Yet, for all its freedom, it's very hard to graduate there. The workload is intense, and only those gifted with high self-regulation and motivation seem to thrive there. The attrition rate is atrocious (it was 60% when I attended). Yet it was perfect for me because I thrive under the hands-off approach. I wonder at the disservice done to those who needed more scaffolding, the many, many dropouts who are now doing odd jobs or who found a better fit at a more traditional school. I guess that's why the theories of niche picking resonate so strongly with me. I think much of good career counseling involves helping the client know themselves enough to know in which kinds of environments they are likely to be most successful. It's a shame that this often takes place at the undergraduate level, where it's often difficult and costly to change one's direction. I'd love to see more of this done at the middle school level. But I digress. My main point is that now I know that school principals matter, really matter, to the successful functioning of a school, and that deliberate exercises involving perspective change may help to increase positive, supportive relationships in an organization (the latter is in need of experimental testing however!).