Clarence Fisher (@glassbeed) tweeted out the other day:

I replied:

And several folks asked me to elaborate on that second part —

That’s more than a 140 character response… so here goes.

At its most basic, the skill sets that allow you to be successful as a teacher are not necessarily the skill sets that set you up to succeed as a teacher. For example, any photographic evidence of my desk and office back when I was a teacher / tech coordinator would show a cluttered mess. It was o.k., I have a really good memory and I could put my hands on just about anything when I really needed to. I enjoyed that mess, honestly. I felt comfortable in it, and I was pretty effective in it. However, when I became a principal, I found that methodology didn’t work for me anymore. I had to change a fundamental part of the way I worked. There was too much to keep in my head so that a major part of how I worked had to change. I had to become more organized. I had to develop new systems if I was going to be successful as a principal.

That may not sound that much, but for a lot of us (and I include myself in this), how we work often is part of who we are. I loved being that messy teacher. And it wasn’t enough for me to say, "I need to be more organized." I had to say, "I have to be a more organized person." Now, I don’t leave most days unless I go through the pile of papers on my desk. And moreover, I’ve noticed that I’ve changed the way I think about a messy desk. It actively bothers me now, which I never would have thought.

That’s a somewhat easy answer, but there’s a deeper level of this as well. One of my mentors pulled me aside as I was taking on more administrative roles back at Beacon and said, "Up until now, you’ve had a lot of success on the faculty being a passionate advocate for your own ideas. Now, your job is to support other people’s ideas." That was a shift. There’s no question that being a principal — especially a founding principal — means having a vision and being able to articulate it passionately and powerfully, but after that, unless you want every idea to come out of your office, you really do need to be able to step back and let others inhabit that vision — sometimes (even often) in ways you have never thought of.

Those are two examples that are specific to me, but I’d posit that everyone needs to go through this process when they become a principal. Many of us who are teachers have made being a teacher a fundamental part of our identity. And while I don’t think administrators should ever stop thinking of themselves as teachers, there is a shift that must happen in the way we see ourselves. It requires different strengths, different skills, to be a successful principal than the skills that allowed us to be successful in our career up to that point. Going through that process can involve a bit of a sense of loss, but it is a necessary thing to do.

So now I’m wondering… for any admins who read this — do you agree? What did you have to give up or change in self-examination when becoming an admin? And for other folks… what skill or trait or tendency that serves you very well as a teacher could you see being less of a positive thing as an administrator?

Tags: admininstration