Bring In A New Breed

It's hard to improve a school culture without a new breed. A new breed can expose people to new ways of thinking and working. Therefore, when hiring new people it's advantageous to bring on people who are better than the people who left. In other words, the new teacher hired should be the best teacher in the school with the goal being that the school will become more like the new teacher.

When hiring this new breed look for those who will not only be excellent in the classroom but will also have a profound influence on the whole school. Also, focus on talents. Those who have the talent to love students, are bright minded, have a positive attitude, have a congenial personality, have a great work ethic, and have leadership skills will learn the needed skills and eventually in the long run outperform those who are resting on experience and credential laurels.


These thoughts are taken from the following works:

1. What Great Principals Do Differently by Todd Whitaker
2. High-Velocity Culture Change by Price Pritchett and Ron Pound

Principals and Spiritual Leadership

When I was at BYU working on my doctorate I wrote a paper for one of my classes about the leadership of principals and diverse learners. My conceptual framework was:

• Principals have the potential to have an impact on student academic achievement
• Diverse learners have specific, unique needs that, if met contribute to their academic success
• The principles and attributes of spiritual leadership complement the needs diverse learners have to be successful
• Principals who become spiritual leaders will help diverse learners experience greater academic success

My hypothesis became: Principals who approach their educational leadership role as a spiritual leader will be more effective in helping diverse learners be academically successful. Therefore, over the next few blog postings we'll explore what it means to be a spiritual leader and what it takes to become one.