Читать книгу The New Principal - Margaret Carter - Страница 7

Is your staff large or small? Is it a homogenous group where teachers all teach the same subject, or grade level? Or is the staff heterogeneous with a mix of subjects or grade levels?

Personal Experience

Are small staffs or tiny schools easier? Please don’t believe this. Before being promoted to principal, I had been an assistant principal at the largest elementary school in the district with over eight hundred students, forty-five teachers, and twenty-five non-certified staff. Moving to the smallest school in the district, with one hundred students and one teacher per grade level, I thought it would be an easy assignment with time to spare. Unfortunately, this tiny school scored lowest in the district in reading and math. I set out to put things in order so I could focus on the student’s academic needs.

When I asked about programs, committees, and schedules, the lead teacher replied, making a circular motion with her hands, “We all do everything!” What? How is that possible? Well I found out how possible it was! Determined to do as I had successfully done at the large school, I plowed ahead and tried to form teams (one teacher and myself). After all, a team of two is still a team. It would be her responsibility to get the word out about what “we” had decided. Well word indeed did get around about everything we’d decided, the informal leaders took over, parking lot meetings were held, and the plans exploded—right in my face.

In a large school, with many programs and teams, the principal’s job is, in many ways easier. Because of the sheer number of people available to do the work, the labor and the leadership is distributed. The principal’s task is to find a balance between having enough teams so that everyone can function within their best capacity and having too many teams where their goals, activities, and responsibilities become crossed, resulting in confusion. More discussion on staff teams can be found in chapter 2 on staff.