Wisdom for Wannabes: Encouragement from a New Principal
Every fall semester, I begin a new journey with aspiring school leaders who quickly have their eyes and minds thrown open by new, sometimes conflicting ideas, possibilities and controversies as they try to understand school leadership from a broad perspective. I call it the balcony view. They probably tire of the phrase. Inevitably, we spend time talking about how simple and straightforward good school leadership looks from the safety of a comfortable chair, newspaper article, politician’s stump speech, corporate board room, faculty lounge, or classroom or office tucked away in the Ivory Tower. And every fall semester, through those messy and often long-running conversations, I’m encouraged by the passion, level of commitment and desire to do good work I see in our students. A couple years ago, I asked Tara Estep ( @TaraEstep ), one of our program graduates and a new principal, to participate in a blogging project with my class of aspiring principals. I knew Tara