As School Head, you have long recognized that your middle and upper school divisions (grades 6-12) have a great deal both to gain and to lose from your athletic program. The interrelationships among enrollment, character development, and interscholastic sports are many and complex. The advantages of your athletic program should not obscure issues that are evident in what happens to children. Consider the following statistics. (Cited in Until It Hurts: America’s Obsession with Youth Sports and How It Harms Our Kids by M. Hyman [Boston: Beacon Press, 2009].)

As more and more curriculum and program are being squeezed into our academic days, schools are looking for creative ways to make everything fit. One practice gaining in popularity is eliminating or significantly curtailing the time permitted for recess in lower schools. In the battle for the awarding of precious minutes, academic time may be deemed more important than physical time. But studies published this year in the Journal of Neuroscience, The Journal of School Health, and Pediatrics suggest a strong link between activity and students’ ability to learn.

Knowing how effective your summer program teachers are is essential in maintaining and improving the reputation of your program, and thus your ability to sustain or increase its size. The reputation of your summer program is almost entirely dependent on the impact that faculty have on students for the brief time that they teach and entertain them, typically in one-week periods.

In ISM’s experience, the most frequently expressed administrative concern about the advisory program is unevenness in the quality of adviser functioning. Teachers’ motivation, skill, “buy-in,” and overall professionalism in this role often vary considerably. Clarity about the role—its purposes, priorities, limits, and sources of assistance—provides focus. This clarity and focus, for those with less affinity for the role of adviser, instills a sense that the job is “do-able” (i.e., not an “all-things-to-all-people” set of responsibilities). These boundaries also “rein in” any faculty who tend to overdo (i.e., become over-involved in the lives of their advisees). On a broader level, this kind of clarity implicitly makes advising more professional and contributes to a culture that values professional development in this role on behalf of students.

What is the real job of the Academic Management Team (i.e., Deans, Division Heads, and Department Heads) at your school? It often seems that those who report to the Head of School have an overwhelming array of responsibilities. Job descriptions are diffuse and often end with the ubiquitous phrase (or assumption) “and other tasks as required.”

Professional development is essential to the stability and strength of your school, and ISM always recommends that schools have strong programs in place. It is one of the few areas in school operation where you can receive a maximum return for minimum expense. Professional development is the core element of ISM’s evaluation systems, Meaningful Faculty Evaluation™ and Strategic Management Evaluation™.

“Teachers rank second only to air traffic controllers in terms of stress.”   - Dr. Milbrey McLaughlin, cited in High Energy Teaching (ISM, 1993) Teachers have an avid interest in working with children and adolescents, and in helping them grow and mature in every aspect of their character. As teachers continue in their profession, however, evidence indicates many deteriorate rather than renew, or leave the profession rather than commit long term. An Education Week survey reveals that 20% of new teachers leave the classroom after three years, and 50% quit after five. Although their original motivation may not burn out, their ability to renew and revive often does.

ISM suggests that you, as Board President, think of strategic planning as a quadrennial activity. During the months prior to the day(s) on which you will gather your Board and Head (and, if appropriate, other senior administrators) for the planning event itself, data gathering is usually in order. For example, many Boards conduct a current parent survey in order to provide themselves with a sense of that constituent group’s strategic excitements, interests, and concerns, thereby widening the participation circle indirectly beyond that of the planners themselves. A similar survey of faculty/staff, young alumni, and former parents may be productive. Certainly, comparative data such as faculty salary and fringe benefit benchmarks will enhance the quality of the strategic planning process itself, as will a thoughtful self-scoring on ISM’s Stability Markers®.

Courtesy and professionalism are contagious, as are their opposites. As Head, you want to have a better grasp of how effectively your school’s non-instructional personnel display these qualities when dealing with your faculty members and with each other. After all, your employees will always tend to be on their best behavior when you are nearby.

In their recent book, Geeks and Geezers: How Era, Values, and Defining Moments Shape Leaders, (Boston: Accenture LLP, 2002), Warren Bennis and Robert Thomas have isolated what they believe are the four essential characteristics that all leaders share. In the process the authors feel they have defined “how leaders come to be.” Their findings should be of great interest to you as a Head of School—the day-to-day leader.