Principals as Instructional Leaders–Again and Again
Everyone wants to go to heaven but no one wants to die. Everyone wants principals to be instructional leaders but no one wants to take away anything from the principals’ job.
Like superintendents and teachers, principals are expected to instruct, manage, and politick to be effective leaders. Because principals, like teachers and superintendents, have limited hours and energy (e.g., spending time with family, friends, sleep, exercise, reading–need I go on?), they face tensions over what they should choose to do each day. Thus, choices become compromises to ease tensions entangled in their teaching, managing, and politicking roles.
Most principals are passionate about being an instructional leader. Yet, they admit privately and in workshops I have led that they spend most of their time on managerial tasks. To be an instructional leader, however, principals must spend large chunks of their time in classrooms, working to both support and evaluate teachers. Current reform talk makes that choice even harder.
Calls for principals to be CEOs can be heard from superintendents, pundits, and others who couldn’t last a week
