Tag Archives: principal

Hitting a lot of ‘lasts’

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As I approach retirement, I’m start to hit a lot of ‘lasts’. The last time I’m figuring out staffing. The last time I’m supervising a Spring Formal. And tonight was the last District’s Principal Association dinner. I’ve got a few more things that I’ve still got to do more than once, but it seems like every time I turn around I’m doing yet another thing for the last time.

I’ve honestly not thought too much of it in my day-to-day, and often realize I did something for the last time after the fact… But that has taken a recent turn. As my last day at work looms, I have to admit that I’m thinking about it a lot more. The last moment of the last day seems really surreal to me… and it’s getting a whole lot closer.

Office referrals

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I’ve repeatedly said what a privilege it was to start my teaching career where I did. I was surrounded by new and truly great teachers whom I got to grow up with. Some of them are still my closest friends today, and many of them are principals. Even the ones who didn’t go the route of administration, are still great teacher leaders today.

One benefit of entering the profession in this incredible environment is that we had a culture of sharing and cooperation, and it was common to see another teacher or the principal or vice principal visit classrooms. If the VP walked into your room, you didn’t stop teaching, you kept going until a good stopping point. In fact, the VP might even contribute to the lesson.

Another aspect of this is that we barely ever sent anyone to the office. In 9 years at a middle school I can only remember sending 2 students to the office, there might have been more, but like I mentioned in my post, “The 4 ‘D’s leading to office discipline”, I could count my office referrals on one hand. But the point I want to make here was also mentioned in that post but not explicitly discussed.

When you get into administration of a school, one of the most shocking things you’ll encounter is that some teachers use the administration as part of their classroom management strategy. Coming from the environment I did, teachers managed their classroom and something ‘really serious’ had to happen before a student was sent to the office. Other than that, we figured things out.

My first assignment as VP was filled with office referrals that shocked me. I can’t tell you how many times I thought to myself, ‘That’s it? That’s all this kid did? And that’s why he’s in my office?’ This was my biggest adjustment, a huge realization of how amazing my first 9 years were at Como Lake Middle School. We had a culture of learning and caring that was significantly above the norm, and so ‘normal’ felt insufficient.

I currently work at schools where I find that not only are office referrals appropriate, but I’ll often get a ‘heads-up’ of a potential issue, and then that issue could still get handled without me. But my first VP job was a shocker. The adjustment I had to make was to not make unhealthy comparisons to my previous experience. Yes, this issue would have been handled differently at Como Lake, but things are different here.

It was a hard transition, to be supportive and not judgmental. Like I said before, “In my eyes, sending a kid to the office was essentially telling the kid, “I cant manage you,” which takes away any leverage I may have the next time this student has any challenging behaviour.”

Now, the complaints I deal with for my online school are often ones where parents are already involved, making the situation a bit more complicated before they get to me. Or at Inquiry Hub, kids are sent to me to solve good problems… they want to do a project that needs special permission or considerations. I love solving problems where my biggest challenge is, how do I get to ‘Yes’? How do I solve this problem so that our students can benefit? These are by far my favourite office referrals… rather than doling out consequences for inappropriate behaviour.

The lone principal

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I have been the lone administrator for my schools since September 2009. In fact, I only ever had one Vice Principal position for a year and a half before that, with a principal in the building, and so I’ve been ‘on my own’ for over 90% of my time as a school leader.

In February a vice principal was given a district level role in my building and we both learned that he was going to be my replacement when I retired at the end of this school year. While his current role did pull him out of our building a fair bit, we had regular meetings that allowed us to have time together that is almost never available with a traditional transfer of school principals. This time has been an absolute gift.

Even more than the transfer of knowledge around two programs outside of the traditional school setting, what I’ve really enjoyed is the collegial conversations and support. There are a lot of challenges to being the lone administrator in a building and to have a colleague to work with over the past few months has been very special.

To all the principals and vice principals who get to team up in a school, never forget what a privilege it is to have colleagues that you get to work with directly on a daily basis. And to all the lone administrators out there, find your people and book time to spend with them.

Besides these past few months, I also had 2 meetings a month with our principal of the adult learning centre & summer learning. She and I worked together when I first started with the online school and she was the department head.

Also, for the past few years I have had 2 other principals running completely different programs in my building. Although most day to day activities keep us apart, we still occasionally have time to connect, share, and even support each other.

I can’t express how valuable these meetings have been. Lone administrators need to seek out other lone administrators and find a reason to connect regularly. Not something ad hoc, but something scheduled. These past few months have really made me appreciate just how valuable it is to have a colleague you can really talk to and work through things with. It has been an absolute blessing to have this collegial opportunity to end my career.

The benefits of a long tenure

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Last night I had my second to last PAC (Parent Advisory Council) meeting for Inquiry Hub Secondary School before I retire. I’ve had the privilege of running the school for almost 13 years. Year one of the school I was the co-founding VP, and half of a year in my principal got promoted. I’ve had the honour of running the school ever since.

At the PAC meeting I noted that in that entire time, I’ve only had two PAC presidents, both with 3 kids going through the school. This got me thinking of how rare these two stats are. It’s unusual to see a principal of a school go past 7 or 8 years, and rarer still to be approaching 13 years. The longest you will usually see a PAC President keep their position is 4 years.

Sometimes it’s good to mix things up, but there are times when you’ve got a good thing going, and it’s fantastic to stay and make things really work. I feel blessed that I’ve had that opportunity, and that I’ve been in a stable community of families that love and support what we do. It has made the journey extremely rewarding.

Must do vs want to do

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I can tell it’s close to March break because I feel like a holiday is due. The biggest signal in my brain for this is that I can feel the shift in my thoughts move from, ‘What do I want to get done?’ Move more to, ‘What do I need to get done?’

At this point I’m wanting to efficiently and effectively get through the ‘must do’s’, checking off the tasks and responsibilities essential to do a good job. But those other things I really want to do, the special projects I created for myself, the extra tasks I envisioned getting out of the way before the break… these things are no longer feeling like priorities. They’ve been put on hold until after the break.

I’ve written a lot about the difference between leadership and management over the years, and the challenges of a principal’s role to do management well enough that there is time for true leadership. I can often express the importance of the role being about the leadership beyond the management, getting the things you want to do to lead done, and not just getting lost in the things that need to get done to run an organization.

What I haven’t admitted yet is that sometimes the energy level just isn’t there… like a few days before a two week holiday. Which also happens to be a time when you aren’t the only one looking forward to the break. And at these times the most important thing is to get what needs to be done off of your plate.

There are still ways to lead, to show gratitude and appreciation for others, and to be present with others… but at these times it’s perfectly ok to put the ‘want to do’ projects and plans on hold. What you can’t do is disconnect from the important things that still need to get done.

Come back from the holidays refreshed and ready to take on the world. But if you drop the ball on the ‘must do’s’ before the break, the catch upon return will keep you farther still from the ‘want to do’s’ you love about your job.

So, don’t feel guilty about putting those special projects on hold, but also don’t forget about all the things that you can do now to reduce the friction and workload, and prime yourself for the stuff you know you want to do when you return after the break. Manage all the tasks you can, focus on being productive, and you’ll pave the way for more inspired work when you return.

Parents as Partners

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This week we had a student IEP (Individualized Education Plan) meeting with a family. It was a meeting that really could not have gone better. It involved both parents and an advocate, myself and three teachers. From start to finish the meeting was focused on one thing: how do we work together to provide the best possible environment for their child/our student to thrive?

When everyone has the same objective, it almost always makes a meeting go well. But sometimes it’s clear that it isn’t just the objectives that are similar but also the approach, and then it’s easy for strategies to be put into place and for everyone to come out of the meeting feeling like we truly are partners working together.

Way back in 2009-10, when I was living in China and working as a principal in a foreign national school, I shared a series in my school newsletters that I called ‘Parents as Partners’. While some of the links I shared no longer work, the messages still hold true.

I started the post saying this:

“I firmly believe that “It takes a community to raise a child” and so without cooperation and communication between a school and their parent community, ‘we’ cannot fully support our children and their learning. That said, I often wonder about how we can more meaningfully engage parents in a way that they want to be engaged.”

You can head to that post to see some of the ideas I shared… and you are welcome to use anything there for yourself, editing as you see fit.

Fuelling my disillusionment

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A few months ago I wrote the following in response to a LinkedIn post, and then saved it in my drafts. The problem is, I didn’t copy the link to the original post properly. Furthermore, if I recall, it didn’t really answer the question that was posed. It was tangentially connected but not completely on topic.

I’ve edited my comment slightly, and I want to share it since I’m wonder if ‘it’s just me’ feeling this way?

~~~ ~~~ ~~~

It’s the doing more with less that fuels my disillusionment.

  • Greater and often unrealistic expectations of parents and universities.
  • Greater student social-emotional as well as educational needs.
  • Greater demands to prevent litigation (more documentation, more protection of data, more health & safety requirements… all ‘necessary’, but time consuming.)
  • Greater demands and expectations from the Ministry of Education, and Worksafe BC.
  • Greater costs – pay hikes, heating costs, perishable supplies. Even with no cuts to education, less money gets to the classroom.
    I could go on. I’ve watched my role shift from educational leader to middle manager of an educational machine. I feel like a shield trying to redirect and manage the above impacts away from teachers so that they, rather than we, can do great things with kids.

Still an important role but a lot less personally rewarding.

Am I the only principal feeling this?

Pruning – Strategic Subtraction

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One of my favourite quotes comes from Derek Sivers:

“If more information was the answer, then we’d all be billionaires with perfect abs.”

When looking at Dr Simon Breakspear’s ‘The Pruning Principle – Unlocking educational progress by mastering the art of strategic subtraction,’ I feel as though there is a chasm between the insightful information he shares, and the ability to use that information meaningfully and effectively in schools. Simon summed this up at the BC Principals and Vice Principals Association conference in Whistler yesterday when he said, “Subtraction is harder than it looks!”

So, let’s examine this Pruning Principle a little closer and leap over the chasm between this insightful concept and it’s usefulness.

The premise:

In gardening pruning, cutting back, is essential to cultivating long-term vitality. That said, it’s important to recognize that pruning almost never involves removing something completely.

The challenge:

The ideas of ‘doing less’ or ‘de-implementation’ have negative connotations. ‘Pruning’ is a better, more positive frame. The challenge is to recognize that sometimes we have to stop doing many good things to spend time doing fewer better things.

“There is nothing so useless as doing effectively that which should not be done at all.” ~ Peter Drucker

The plan:

  1. Examine (Review the landscape.)
  2. Remove (Subtract with care.)
  3. Nurture (Cultivate what matters.)

With a focus on ‘impact’, intentionally remove things we do that are not as impactful or effective as we think, in order to nurture and give more time to the truly impactful things.

This is an iterative process. The pruning need not, and probably should not, be big/irreversible/long-term/complex-structure. Instead start small/reversible/short-cycle/short-term.

The targets:

Areas to target for pruning:

  • Time
  • Priorities
  • Physical and visual space
  • People/participants involved
  • Commitments and responsibilities
  • Processes or steps in a process
  • Platforms and schools
  • Rules and policies
  • Standards and frameworks

The goals:

  1. Redirect finite energy and resources
  2. Stimulate desired new growth
  3. Reshape for health and longevity

The questions:

What is on my ‘Stop Doing’ list?

What can I Delay, Delegate, or Dump?

How do I shift my internal dialogue from pruning being a negative, a subtraction, to being one where pruning is about caring and greater competence?

The example:

Pruning is a great metaphor, it takes the subtraction of things to help nurture them and have them blossom or bloom. But my favourite example from Simon Breakspear was about learning to ride a bicycle. One of the biggest challenges in learning to ride is balance. A kid’s bike comes with training wheels. While the wheels prevent falling over, they are a crutch that doesn’t actually help with balance. Now, we see little bikes with no pedals, and no training wheels. Kids are learning to balance before learning to pedal… and they are learning to ride both younger and faster! Instead of adding training wheels, we subtracted the pedals and made the learning journey better.

The first steps:

Choose a target area and start small. Do small experiments. Focus on the improvements you want while remembering that you are already at capacity. You aren’t going to effectively add more, or do better, unless you prune somewhere else.

We can flourish (blossom) when we focus time and resources on things that have impact. By pruning distractions and low-impact efforts, we and our teams can redirect energy towards what truly matters… enhancing both performance and wellbeing.

AI Assisted Letters of Reference

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As principal, I frequently get asked to write letters of reference or requests to fill out reference questionnaires. Something that I’ve always done is asked for a ‘brag sheet’ so that I don’t end up forgetting something about the person I’m writing the reference for. An example is that I might forget that a student was a major organizer of an event we ran, or I might have forgotten about their service they do for the community outside of school.

Recently I have been using AI to assist me, specifically Google’s Notebook LM. What I did was I took 8 old reference letters that I wrote and changed the names so that there was no reference to the actual student I wrote them for, and I inputted these into the notebook as style references. For one of them I also included a brag sheet.

Now when a student gives me a brag sheet, I write a prompt that says to write a reference letter for the scholarship I specify, giving criteria for the scholarship, sharing the brag sheet, and asking for it to be written in the exact style of the 8 examples I shared, using the information from the brag sheet.

At this point the reference letter is over 90% complete. A few changes by me and the whole process is done in about 10 minutes (this includes a name change because I don’t put the new student’s name in either). Normally, this would take me over a 1/2 hour and sometimes longer to ensure that I’m hitting all the chords relating to both the brag sheet and the scholarship requirements.

Most of my minor changes are either up or downplaying something from the brag sheet or editing to ensure the reference is in my voice, although this is often already evident based on the examples I provided. My last part of this is copying the text as plain text onto letterhead.

In all honesty, I think these new letters of reference are better than my originals. I often focused on fewer items that I knew about and didn’t give the full scope of the brag sheet. Now I just add a sentence or two about the parts I really know about the student to highlight my connection and understanding of them, and what they do at the school. I feel like my voice comes through and the AI provides more detail than I normally do. So not only is this a great time saver, I’m actually doing a better job to support my students.

Constant interruptions

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I was reminded yesterday of the never ending flow of interruptions that a school principal can be faced with. My day went well enough, nothing major happened, and I had some positive interactions with both students and staff. But I was a yo-yo bouncing in and out of my office, feeling like I was always working on a task other than what I wanted to, or planned to, be working on.

At one point I washed my coffee cup to fill it and then ran two errands with an empty cup in my hand, because I was distracted before filling it. At another point I was holding an HDMI cable that I was taking to a teacher and was interrupted a couple times, and even went back to my office holding the cable, before finally taking it to its intended place.

And this is often the norm. Being pulled one way when trying to go another. Starting a task and finding it undone an hour later. Creating a quick ‘To Do’ list, only to make it a ‘To Do Tomorrow’ list.

At one point I was asked a policy question regarding funding for an online course. I was pretty sure our system was trying to charge a student for a course I thought they should get for free. I went to the OneNote where I keep my links to the BC government policies. I got several 404 errors on the website. This even happened to my 2025-26 policy link I added in April. It seems the Ministry has made updates again and changed the main links.

I searched the website for the specific reference. Couldn’t find it. I asked Copilot to look for me. Copilot agreed with me, but didn’t provide links to the actual policy for this specific situation. I asked my online principal’s group chat, and this usually very responsive chat stayed silent for an hour and 40 minutes. Then I got an answer agreeing with me with a comment that this principal also couldn’t find the answer when she asked previously, and had to get a response from the Ministry via email.

What should have been a simple question took me almost 2 hours to answer. And I can’t even count the amount of other things I did in that time, including a 45+ minute meeting and a 10 minute phone call to a parent that I played text tag with trying to find a good time that we could both chat.

Yesterday was a good reminder of the constant interruptions, redirections, and multitasking expectations of a principal. Sure there are those moments that are efficient and effective, but for large parts of any given day, with countless ‘other duties as assigned’ tossed unexpectedly onto my ‘To Do’ list, or rather the ‘Gotta do this first’ list… most of the time the interruptions are the job.