Introduction
I scheduled three sessions during which I spent time following a Lower School Principal, DA, while she performed her duties. Two of these sessions were during the morning and one was during the afternoon. Each of the morning sessions took place in DA’s office and we spent the afternoon time moving between classrooms.
During the sessions, I had the opportunity to watch DA in a number of different modes. I observed her as she planned her schedule, as she dealt with other administrators, as she mentored new teachers, as she met with parents and their children and as she observed her faculty in the classroom.
My impressions
Two primary issues kept coming up during the time in which I shadowed her:
First and formost, I was struck by how concerend DA is about her schedule. I don’t mean to say that she was worried about it, rather that she recognized its importance. During our debriefing conversations she explained that it took her several years to learn how critical it is to plan her time out in advance and that the realization has made her a more effective administrator. This struck a nerve with me as I’m playing an administrative role for the first time this year and I’m finding myself challenged by the same concerns.
DA works with an administrative assistant, one she shares with her two assistant principals. Although the concept is not new to me, watching her work with her assistant made me realize that I’ve never given consideration to what such an employee actually does or how a principal can best make use of one.
A second major concern was how visible she made herself for the faculty. DA was focused on making the most out of her time in her office so that she could get out and be seen by the members of her faculty.
Time Management and Productivity
DA told me at the start of our first session together that her administrative assistant was “really in charge.” I’ve heard this sort of self-effacing comment before but, over the course of the 30-minute session which followed, I came to see how literally she meant it.
During the first half-hour of each day, DA and her assistant meet to plan out her schedule for the rest of the day. Every meeting is blocked out, as are blocks of time during which she closes her door and works alone. Once this skeleton of the day is established, to-do lists are written so that every task is identfied and scheduled. There is an understanding that the administrative assistant’s primary job is to help create this schedule and then keep DA on it; she escorts every visitor into the office and knocks to end every meeting. If people approach for “just five minutes,” she schedules them a five-minute slot (or longer) later in the day. The daily plan is sacrosanct… it was remarkable.
DA confided in me once the door was closed and we were alone for her work session that at first she didn’t really know what to do with the time. But, as she came to appreciate the organizational structure they had produced together, she found herself knocking tasks out quickly and easily and being far more productive than she had ever been before.
They didn’t invent the system; they attended a seminar together on the subject and came away inspired and energized. I was honestly amazed at how seriously they both took it and how well it worked.
DA used the work period to make pre-scheduled return calls to parents, answer emails, organize and delegate projects… she even did some of her reading with the time. What she didn’t do was answer a ringing telephone, take avoidable meetings or surf the internet.
She did take two calls during the session, one from the Head of School and another from the Chief of Operations. One of these calls came during her planning time with her assistant; it was clear to me that she places a priority on certain people and allows them to interrupt her; the firmness with which others were turned away made these interuptions even more important.
Visibility
In addition to “hiding away” for her work time, DA made it a point to be as visible as possible when not working on specific tasks. She pre-schedules time to “prowl,” as she calls it, leaving her walkie-talkie in her office and only answering cell-phone calls from her assistant. She carried a notepad with her and visited rooms with specific goals pre-identified: observe Mrs. Jones’s use of the electronic whiteboard, Mr. Smith’s classroom management and if the new student in Grade 4b is still eating lunch alone.
I noticed that the faculty and students were undisturbed when she visited classrooms, which must mean that she is there often. Students were happy to see her and, as far as I could tell, teachers continued as though we weren’t there.
Anecdote 1 – Surprise meeting
During the second morning I spent with DA, her work-time was interrupted when a new student ran from his first-grade class in tears and the father was called into school. The student was not acclimating well and DA took the opportunity to meet with them both and the teacher.
She focused her attention almost exclusively on the child, speaking to the father as little as possible. She listened to his concerns and offered a solution, that the boy buddy up with another student to make friends more easily. I was surprised when, next, she recommended that the father take the boy home until the turmoil there subsided (Mom was in the hospital with the baby) and the situation was more calm. She explained that her only concern was the boy’s learning and, since he currently was too distracted to focus in the classroom, he would be better off at home where he would be less anxious.
What impressed me the most throughout the meeting was how focused DA was on student learning – it was her only concern and, as she explained to me later, she feels it proper that that’s her role.
Anecdote 2 – teacher meeting
DA made time to meet one-on-one with a rookie teacher. There was no specific agenda, rather this was part of an ongoing process of regular meetings she has with her entire faculty, more often with new teachers.
After the general discussion ended, the conversation turned to a single student about whom the teacher was worried. DA asked a series of diagnostic questions and made concrete, strategic suggestions. She stayed focused on the child’s progress throughout the meeting and kept steering the teacher away from anecdotes and asking for specific, assessment-based evidence. They looked to assessment results from last year as well, noting the student’s progress and discussed strategies the teacher could use for her upcoming meeting with the parents.
The meeting ended just as DA’s assistance knocked on the door to announce the scheduled end. I was struck by how, throughout the meeting, DA took no notes; she focused her attention on the teacher and conducted things conversationally. It felt informal but was, I realized, one of the most focused and productive educational meetings I’ve ever witnessed.