First day...game day...either way...

What do great principals do with their resources on those first days with staff? The days before the children appear in great masses, eager to learn?

As a teacher, I wanted to get into my classroom, set up, organize, dial in everything so that it was perfect.

Class lists, supply guidelines, new attendance policies, contacting parents, cleaning, moving, sorting, training on new technology, distributing curriculum, re-connecting with my colleagues...these were all things on my mind as an educator.

Making that transition from teacher to administrator can be challenging.

Here are 6.5 principles that will help;

Any time you get your staff together, talk about relevant instructional strategies - which means that you should know enough about student performance, parent feedback and district guidelines to cover highly relevant strategies that can be immediately applied.
Planning & preparation pay off proportionatley - practice on your mentor, read your notes out loud, and know that pursuit of perfection leads to excellence.
Use email and Twitter (yes Twitter) to deliver housekeeping items - its an expectation.
Model instructional strategies you expect your teachers to implement in the classroom - I can no longer count the # of trainings I've attended where it was stand and deliver and facilitators were teaching about an interactive/brain-based strategy.
Use experts, exemplars and multi-media tools - if you have examples of what you expect quality teacher work to look like, get it into the hearts, minds and hands of your teachers.
Inspire with relevant examples - Anthony Robles is a local ASU hero and I've incorporated videos of his narratives about his life and choices into my professional development. It is relevant to parent involvement, classroom culture, athletics, ability and long-term success.

6.5 "Leadership is best learned assessing, understanding and THEN doing." - Jeffrey Gitomer

Best of planning and execution to all my fellow principals out there. Here's to putting children, students and communities first.

- Principal Sharp

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