Lesson 1: You’re Dead in the Water Without a Great Principal
You know how they say that people come to look like their dogs? A parallel truism is that any organization comes to look like its leader. For some reason, though this idea is axiomatic in corporate life—who would attribute the success of Apple to its highly effective programmers?—when you get to schools, I rarely hear it said that every school embodies the values of its principal. But it’s meaningless to talk about teacher “effectiveness” outside of the context in which he or she works. One of the biggest lessons I learned this year is that a teacher cannot, repeat, cannot be effective for long in a dysfunctional community. And whether that school community is or is not functional is entirely dependent on the leadership of the principal.
Over the last year, as I visited high school English classrooms across the socioeconomic spectrum, one of the 10 Big Lessons I learned in my year of observations was that every school resembles its principal. If a principal is highly disciplined, orderly and data-driven, that school will also quickly become disciplined, orderly and data driven and will attract teachers who are disciplined, orderly and data-driven. If a principal is warm, passionate about ideals, visionary and relationship-oriented, that school will reflect those values and draw teachers who share those values. A creative, innovative principal will attract and empower similar teachers. Any of these schools, though different, will be coherent and functional; it will be, in the words of Valerie Braimah, a healthy ecosystem in which students can learn.
During my year, I saw many different varieties of excellent principals; each created a different school culture that met the demands of very different communities. Jessica Lesson 1: You’re Dead in the Water Without a Great Principal | Gatsby In L.A.: