The Assistant Principal Podcast

Show Intro   Hello colleagues and welcome to the Assistant Principal Podcast. I’m your host Frederick Buskey. The goal of this podcast is to help improve the life and leadership of assistant principals. This podcast compliments APEx, the Assistant Principal Exceleration program, but you certainly don’t need to be an APEx member to find value in the podcast.   It’s just me today talking about the t...

Show Notes, Episode X: Title   About this show: Dr. Melissa Burns is the principal at Sara Collins Elementary School in Greenville, South Carolina. Melissa is a remarkable principal and leader who balances wisdom and practicality. One of Melissa’s many superpowers is developing other people’s leadership. In the first half of this episode, we discuss the importance of developing teacher-leaders and...

The Assistant Principal Podcast Episode X: Tracking Teacher Development Why does it always feel like improving teacher quality is an uphill battle? One big reason is that our schools are not structured to facilitate consistent teacher growth. Focusing on helping teachers to grow requires us to focus on the structures that can support growth first. In this episode we look at on important structure,...

Show Notes, Episode 13: What Makes a Great AP Today I’m joined by Brenda Byrd, an Assistant Superintendent for School Leadership (and a former South Carolina Elementary Principal of the Year and a National Distinguished Principal). Brenda works for Greenville County School District in Greenville South Carolina. Brenda is here with us to talk about what makes an AP great.   Notable Quotes Brenda By...

Show Notes, Episode X: Title   About this show: Today I’m joined by Becca Silver the founder and lead consultant at The Whole Educator. Becca has been posting some great stuff on LinkedIn, which is where we met. Becca is here to help us explore the AP – Instructional coach relationship.     Notable Quotes     Becca Silvers “Teachers are diverse learners, just like their students, we should not be...

The Assistant Principal Podcast Episode 8: Who Should I Coach?   In this episode we look into the surprisingly complex question of “Who should I coach?” We examine the five ways that teachers grow, we overview what a systemic approach to teacher growth looks like in a school, and we answer the question. If you only have time to coach one or two people, then you can’t afford to choose the wrong per...

Episode 7: Dr. Sam Sircey and Perspectives   Today I’m joined by Dr. Sam Sircey , the Principal of North Buncombe High School in Weaverville NC.Sam is here with us today to explore perspective taking!   Dr. Sam Sircey:   “If we can’t get a new perspective, we can become complacent and compliant. That’s okay if we are only here to behave well, but we are here to learn.”   “Faculty meetings – we are...

Today we are doing a coaching grab bag. Today’s episode was inspired by my ongoing work with assistant principals from several different school districts. With these APs we’ve already looked at different types of teacher observations (there are four), some basic observation tools, and some post-observation conferencing strategies. Last month each AP chose one thing to focus on helping a single tea...

Imagine this: You receive only six emails a week. One is from your district office and provides all the info you need for the week. One is from your principal and provides all the info your teachers need for the week. The other four are from the PLC teams that you support and are copies of their meeting notes and action items.   Almost no email, and none of it urgent. Just FYI stuff. What could yo...

This is a special edition of The Assignat Principal Podcast inspired by some work I did recently with nine assistant principals as part of the APEx program. This podcast assumes that you are familiar with 5-mc. If you aren’t, you can go to frederickbuskey.com/resources and download a one-pager. This is a deeper look at the purposes and techniques of 5-mc.   Purpose of 5-mc 1.     Help T become mor...