While attending last summer’s National Principals Conference, rock star principal Jason Markey gently guided us through the dimensions of NASSP’s new Building Ranks™ framework. As the day unfolded, my eye was drawn to one dimension: Human Capital Management. I had never heard of this concept, and to be frank, it seemed sort of archaic and of another century. Managing people as capital? It didn’t sound at all like something I wanted to be involved in. (more…)
My school, long rated as top-performing, was this year given a rating of “targeted” for underperformance among student subgroups—including African-American, free and reduced-price lunch, and special education students. Though this is understandably not an ideal rating, I look at it as a blessing in disguise. We now have a very clear mandate to look at the performance of these subgroups and make immediate improvements. To me, this gives us an opportunity that will ultimately benefit all students, depending on the measures we put in place and the kinds of practices we implement. As an instructional leader, I am reminded that this work starts with me. (more…)
I was recently a guest on Lead the Way, a podcast for school leaders hosted by Bill Ziegler, and we got to talking about how I challenged my staff at Cedar Crest Middle School (CCMS) to begin telling the story of our school on social media at the start of the 2017–18 school year. But my own path down the road of social media technology isn’t very typical for a Digital Principal of the Year. It actually started with a single tweet. (more…)
In today’s connected world, the importance of leveraging technology in education cannot be underestimated. Through the Digital Principals of the Year (DPOY) program, NASSP honors principals who exhibit bold, creative leadership in their drive to harness the potential of new technologies to further learning goals. (more…)
During the 2013–14 school year, I was in my third year as assistant principal/registrar at Dubuque Senior High School. Our principal, Dr. Dan Johnson, was in his first year as principal after serving many years as a counselor and assistant principal at the school. Good things were happening at Dubuque Senior, and school culture was positive. However, we needed a push forward to help make everything come together. The 2014 NASSP Ignite Conference provided that push. (more…)
Being an assistant principal takes dedication, determination, and grit—but it also takes compassion, innovation, and collaboration. All are qualities found in a National Assistant Principal of the Year, and Meghan Redmond, assistant principal at Chief Ivan Blunka School in New Stuyahok, AK, has been honored as this year’s winner. (more…)
In September 2018, NASSP and the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) announced a partnership to highlight the important role that principals have in striving for educational equity, with a focus on safety and inclusion for LGBTQ students. As part of this work, Dr. Beverly Hutton, NASSP’s deputy executive director for programs and services, led a team of four school leaders to the sixth annual Time to THRIVE Conference in February, where they had an opportunity to build awareness and cultural competency, learn current and emerging best practices, and gather resources from leading experts and other national organizations in the field. (more…)
Guest post by Amber Schroering
After the recent Parkland shooting in Florida, I found myself sitting in church and couldn’t bring myself to sing. I just stood there, almost feeling numb, wondering how I could make a difference. I began to feel the same feelings creep in as I read and saw the extent to which our country is still divided over race and gender inequality. My hopelessness continued when a seventh-grade student came into my office because her dad had been arrested the night before after his inebriated girlfriend called the police and claimed domestic violence. The student said her father was punched in the nose, handcuffed, and arrested. And my feelings of despair hit rock bottom when Deputy Jake Pickett was shot and killed in the line of duty. His wife teaches at one of our elementary schools and he was a 2002 graduate of Brownsburg High School. (more…)
Guest post by Abbey Duggins and Amber Schroering
If you’ve spent any amount of time building a high school master schedule, you are familiar with the dreaded “singleton.” A singleton happens when just enough students sign up to create one section of a course—usually an AP or obscure world language—and it throws a major wrench into scheduling every other aspect of the student’s day. A singleton is a scheduling nightmare, but it is also a necessary part of education.
Many positions in instructional leadership can feel like a singleton: there is one superintendent, one principal, one coach. These positions are often lonely, lacking the camaraderie that classroom teachers develop among their peers through the common bonds of students, lesson planning, grading, shared hallways moments, and outside-of-school fun.
So what is a singleton to do? (more…)
Guest post by Bart Peery
In January 2014, while shopping in our local Walmart, I received a voice mail from the county sheriff’s office. Assuming that it had to do with our school, I went to the school to call them back. When I returned the call, my life was forever changed. The officer told me that one of my students had taken her life. I remember sitting alone in my office sobbing, not knowing what to do next. (more…)