The advisory program can be a distinguishing feature among your school’s offerings, and a source of multiple benefits to your students and their families. Of course, it must be well-planned and effectively implemented. There’s also the question of how advisory activities will be scheduled. The success of your advisory program depends, in part, on how it is incorporated into the school day, week, and year. As the School Head, meet with your scheduler to go over your expectations and ensure the schedule supports the scope and excellence of the program.

In a previous article, we listed observable behaviors that collectively form an action premise from which each Headship develops. In this article, we consider the senior administrator position—those who report directly to the Head and collectively form the Leadership Team. The essential expectations list is one of two criteria for administrator evaluation. The other criteria are objectives created from the annual administrative agenda. This agenda’s objectives change each year as the strategic needs of the school continue to evolve, as articulated through the Board’s strategic plan/strategic financial plan. The essential expectations, on the other hand, are a constant reflecting the observable behaviors that the School Head expects each member the Leadership Team to exhibit and the Head evaluates.

For you as a School Head, Human Resources Director, or an academic administrator, toxic teachers can be a puzzling phenomenon. Teachers, at the beginning of their careers, are typically: full of hope; excited about changing the world one child at a time; interested in—or even obsessive about—their subject material; and prone to moving every conversation (even those outside the school) to “what happened at school today.”