Make the most of your time—and your leadership Is your school’s vision getting buried under paperwork? If you spend more time picking up pieces than putting them together, this is your book. Written by seasoned school principals, this plan of action will get you back to the essence of your job: instructional leadership. By using educational technology to maximize efficiency, you’ll improve teaching, student achievement, resource management, and school culture. This comprehensive guide features: Easy-to-follow, single-topic chapters Standards–based scenarios and questions Time-management self-assessments Easily adaptable experiential exercises Strategies for battling the “silent time thief”

This resource provides principals with practical support, step-by-step plans, and hands-on strategies to lead the development of thriving professional learning communities in their schools.

The principal’s role is increasingly understood as a critical lever for school improvement. Yet the job can be a solitary one, offering few opportunities to reflect with colleagues. What does it take to manage the work of continuous improvement—to push staff members constantly to operate outside their comfort zones? What dilemmas and challenges must principals confront? How can school leaders learn from their mistakes and move forward? In Becoming a School Principal, Sarah E. Fiarman describes her first few years as a school principal committed to enacting a powerful vision of leading and learning. Drawing thoughtfully on the literature of school reform and change leadership, Fiarman discusses a wide range of topics, including empowering teachers, building trust, addressing racial and economic inequities, and supporting a culture of continuous learning, as well as thornier issues such as learning to use authority skillfully, dealing with resistance, and managing supervision and evaluation. The book addresses common challenges and highlights missteps as well as successes. A contributing author to several leading books on school reform and instructional improvement, Fiarman engages readers in a lively, frank, and revealing conversation about building the vision and capacity to provide effective instruction for all students and the intensely personal process of learning to lead.

The author of Six Secrets of Change describes how and why the principal's role must change to maximize student achievement *** FREE Professional Development Guide Included *** Principals are often called the second most crucial in-school influencers (after teachers) of student learning. But what should the principal do in order to maximize student achievement? One of the best-known leadership authors in education, Fullan explains why the answer lies neither in micro-managing instruction nor in autonomous entrepreneurialism. He shows systematically how the principal's role should change, demonstrating how it can be done in short order, at scale. Reveals the three key roles that administrators must play in today's schools Explains how to choose the right versus wrong drivers of school success Filled with "action items" to help implement Fullan's program effectively Includes strategies that have been successfully field-tested in schools across the United States and Canada

This book's breakthrough approach to supervision, built on the Teaching Schema for Master Learners introduced in the ASCD best-seller Improving Student Learning One Teacher at a Time, is a simple way to help teachers make the right adjustments in curriculum, instruction, assessment, and feedback—the four areas of practice that make the most difference in how learners learn. Here you'll find clear, practical guidelines designed to complement and enhance your school's existing observation and evaluation models. Jane E. Pollock and Sharon M. Ford explain how to Focus classroom observations and feedback on the critical classroom decisions that promote meaningful, lasting learning. Guide teachers toward the most effective curriculum, teaching, assessment, and feedback strategies for each stage of the lesson. Support teachers' efforts to align the plan book and the grade book for better instructional decisions and higher student achievement. Along with these research-based recommendations, the book also features the voices of working administrators who share the difference this approach has made for them, their teachers, and their students. You too may find it's the tool you've been looking for to revitalize yourself as instructional leader, shift your focus from inspecting teaching to improving learning, and build a more positive and more successful school.

Drago-Severson presents case studies and examines strategies that help shape a school climate of teacher support, growth, and learning.