Introduction
In order to complete this activity, I interviewed two principals at my current school. The first, JM, is in his second year as an Assistant Principal. He has worked in education for over ten years and this is his first full-time administrative position. I also interviewed AH, our Head of School, which is in his 16th year of school administration. I interviewed JM first and it was only after the second interview that I began to see contrasts between the two that lead to interesting conclusions about the changes in perspective that come with experience and the difference they lead to in vision.
When I asked JM to describe his schoolwide vision, his answer parroted much of the language found in the official, published school mission statement; he even made reference to the published version which was hanging on his office wall. And, when I followed up by asking him how he facilitated that vision, he began with references to the professional goals he established at the start of the school year with his immediate supervisor. He explained that he uses various tools to manage faculty and students so that they and he can meet specific guidelines of maximum discipline events, minimum attendance issues, etc. He gave other examples but, in retrospect, his perspective was entirely practical.
To generalize, I would say that JM, in his second year of school leadership, concerned himself with only the practical issues of the functioning of the school, the nuts and bolts that kept classes operating day-to-day.
I was not, however, aware of this general trend at the time. Rather, it was after my next interview that these trends became obvious to me. The second interview was with our Head of School and, when I shared the sort of answers I had gotten from JM, he smiled and explained that he was unsurprised since that sort of technical, practical answers were exactly what he would expect from somone still learning administration.
AH told me that he had been the same way early in his career but now that has has more experience and responsibility, his vision has changed; he now concerns himself with issues out on the horizon, leaving day-to-day concerns to his Principals. When I asked for examples, he told me that, of the time he spends on budgets, roughly 30% of that time is spent on the current year’s schedule; he spends the bulk of his time thinking about next year’s and beyond.
Moving on, I asked AH about how he shares his schoolwide vision with others. He told me that while, early in his career he did quite a bit of speech-making, direct instruction and modeling, he had begun to embrace multi-media communications, media presentations and other methodologies to communicate complex ideas related to his vision.
He shared an interesting example with me by contrasting the recent announcements of infidelity by celebreties David Letterman and Tiger Woods. He pointed out that, by controling the message, Letterman excaped unscathed while, on the same television network, news organizations literally destroyed Woods’s personal and professional life. “The presentation of a message can dwarf and distort the reality,” he said and, while that is a scary idea, it’s applicabilty to school vision is important.
ISLLC Standard I states that a school leader must steward a vision of learning that is shared and supported by the school community and, the more clearly that vision is shared –and the more complex it is– the better off all stakeholders are. AH pointed out to me the difference that experience can bring in this regard and inspired me to try to move up that learning curve as quickly as possible by learning from the expereinces of others rather than relying on only my own..