As School Head, you play a crucial part in your school’s advancement goals—particularly re-enrollment. There is no one else who can speak on behalf of your school quite as comprehensively and authoritatively as the School Head, which means you personally can wield a great deal of power and persuasion when it comes to student retention.
So, while the Admission Office works on accepting new mission-appropriate students, take a moment to address one vital question that no one else can answer.
The Role of the Department Chair: A Middle Manager
Considering the Department Chair as a middle manager can be a difficult proposition. In many schools, the Department Chair still teaches the same number of classes as everyone else and has little real power. Or the Department Chair is, so to speak, the “union leader” of a power group that advocates for its own position within a power structure. The prerequisite for a change in the role to one of middle manager requires the entire faculty culture to be growth-focused. In such a culture and with strong Division Head leadership, the Department Chair can exercise proactive leadership that supports the school’s strategic vision largely by grounding it in a realistic application within the classroom.
19 Qualities of Superior Academic Leadership
Leaders often possess a raw, natural charisma and energy, being the centers around whom others naturally congregate. But, there are distinct qualities which conscientious leaders—particularly academic leaders—actively cultivate to better both themselves and those around them. These people are the ones for which you should watch as you enter this year’s hiring and promotion season.
School Visions: Superfluous or Helpful?
Here at ISM, a lot of our theory and best-practice advice comes from our focus on a school’s mission. We consider the school’s mission a statement of why the institution exists, a “filter” through which every decision must be run. Everything from scheduling to facility expansion to financial aid comes from how a school interprets its mission.
But many organizations have a “vision,” in addition to its mission. When a school already has its mission—its core focus and primary compass pointing the community toward the “ideal” learning environment—a vision feels superfluous, at least initially. Done correctly, however, a school’s vision articulates how a school will fulfill its root mission, making it an interesting (albeit optional) part of the school’s strategic plan and marketing strategy.
Facility Planning and Future Needs
Boards and School Heads must keep their eyes on the horizon when planning for an upgrade or adaptation of an existing facility, or designing a new one. What programs and services will private-independent schools need to offer in the next 10 years to remain competitive? How do they influence the planning and design of new—or adaptation of existing—school buildings?
Busting the Winter Blues for Administrators, Faculty, and Students
The midyear doldrums will strike your school in the post-holiday haze, dragging at the school community as everyone gets back into the regular schedule. That’s not to mention the temporary onset of seasonal affective disorder (SAD), triggered by the waning daylight hours and plunging temperatures of winter. Re-inspire your students, teachers, and fellow administrators through these winter blues busters!
Three Writing Tips for Your “Head’s Column”
Your school’s newsletter is a powerful internal marketing tool, in addition to being an ongoing source of vital information for the school community. As such, you can work to guide casual conversations through your “Head’s Column”—the portion of your school’s newsletter in which you can talk as School Head about important topics that directly impact the school. Writing such a column on a monthly (or even bimonthly) basis can feel daunting, but take a deep breath. We have three things you can do that will immediately improve the column—and your community's response to it.
The Student-Centered Department
Over time, all schools become adult-centered. Adults have all the power and students have none; faculty and administrators may stay around for three or four decades while students keep passing through. Put power and longevity together and it is clear why the evidence for adult-centeredness is so profound. Being student-centered, thus, is not a given, although it is always assumed in schools. Who would suggest otherwise? The Department Chair (or team leader) as a middle manager has a responsibility to lead a student-centered conversation. As School Head or Division Head, inspire your teams to reflect on your own department culture.
The End of School Leadership
In The End of Leadership,1 Barbara Kellerman writes, “Leaders of every sort are in disrepute … we don’t have much better an idea of how to grow good leaders, or of how to stop or at least slow bad leaders, than we did a hundred or even a thousand years ago … that followers are becoming on the one hand disappointed and disillusioned, and on the other entitled, emboldened, and empowered.” She continues, “When everyone is exposed to the point of being vulnerable—no matter their status or station—the gap between leaders and followers shrinks to near the vanishing point.”
Three Monthly Head Talk Meeting Mishaps
Last month, we talked about the benefits of having monthly “Head talks,” during which you’d make yourself available to chat with parents and families in an informal setting. We still believe they’re a great tool for building rapport with families and community stakeholders. There are, however, some problems that may arise in such a program, should you not take care.