The Assistant Principal Podcast

Today’s episode of Five for Friday recaps the strategic leadership emails for the week of June 26-30, 2023.

We are in an era where teacher and school lead autonomy is under a lot of pressure. It is becoming common practice, especially at the elementary level, for teachers to be handed a tightly structured curriculum and scripted teaching package and told “do this.” We even hear the term “teacher-proof” being used to refer to the idea that anyone, even a struggling teacher, can do this program. On the ot...

Today’s episode of Five for Friday recaps the strategic leadership emails for the week of June 19-23, 2023.

In behavioral psychology, a punishment is defined as any change that reduces the likelihood of a behavior occurring again. Retribution is defined as legal revenge, with something being taken or inflicted upon someone else for a wrong. Let’s be honest, we mix these terms up a lot. Students can only act in the ways that they have learned, and only cope using the strategies they have. What if there w...

Today’s episode of Five for Friday recaps the strategic leadership emails for the week of June 12-6, 2023.

One of the most common laments I hear from school leaders involves the lack of student engagement present in so many classrooms. What drives engagement isn’t activities, its learning – deeper learning. But what is deeper learning, and how do we help teachers learn about it and implement it? I hope you are ready as we go deep into deeper learning on today’s episode. 

Today’s episode of Five for Friday recaps the strategic leadership emails for the week of June 4-9, 2023.

I’ve been hearing from a number of people who are getting ready to be brand new assistant principals in the fall and I have been thinking about the most critical things for them to do during the summer and the first few weeks of school. Of course, you need to build relationships and learn how your school does all the paperwork, and you need to get familiar with your policies. Your new principals a...

Today’s episode of Five for Friday recaps the strategic leadership emails for the week of May 29 – June 2, 2023.  I’m going to go completely out of order today and just work through the overall theme which was about solving problems. In today’s episode we will touch on the six dimensions of organizations, the role of leadership, change processes, and an example of identifying root problems. This e...

Last fall I offered a five-page guide on ten activities to support new teachers during the first two- weeks of school. The activities were designed to achieve three goals: ● Create a trusting relationship with the teacher ● Lay the foundations for a well-managed classroom ● Provide curricular guidance Today’s guest has been doing some remarkable work using a high-quality teacher satisfaction surve...

Last Friday I began with a shoutout to Soupman2545 for leaving a review and helping me improve the show. It felt good to begin the show with a thank you so I’m going to begin doing this regularly on Fridays. Today I want to acknowledge the daily email readers and podcast listeners who responded to last week’s challenge to identify the band associated with the titles of each daily email’s subject l...

I know… you don’t have time to pause, you barely have time to breathe, and you are saving flourishing for summer. You are too busy with all the tasks, and taking care of everyone else. Except for being in this moment, and, right now, this is the only moment that matters because it is the only moment you have. And I am so glad you are here, and today’s very special guest is going to help both you a...

If you listened to Tuesday’s incredible show with Tequilla Lamar, you noticed something new – music! Mara and Collin have been suggesting for some time that we needed to add a few musical transitions, but I have been dragging my feet until I read a recent review of the show. Shout out to soupman2545, who left a review that began glowingly… “I am going to be an AP next year and have already begun u...

Let’s face it, you aren’t cut out for this job. You are in over your head, and soon everyone will discover it! What were you even thinking? You can’t help your teachers grow. You should never have done this, and you will certainly never make it to the next level. Ouch – such terrible thoughts! There is a diagnosis for this kind of negative thinking and it is called imposter syndrome – the feeling...

Today’s episode of Five for Friday recaps the strategic leadership emails for the week of May 8-12, 2023. Celebrations: Garden planted out! New AP (1 & 2) mentoring program progress!

That my friends is a musical introduction to today’s theme – The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. We aren’t talking about spaghetti westerns, but rather a valuable process to help school leaders get an honest snapshot of what is working, what’s not working, and most importantly what to do about it. My guests are two incredible educational leaders and human beings and you’ll be tapping into over 100 ye...

Today we will begin with the end. There are many big and complex problems we need to solve, but the process will be slow and require great effort. In contrast, there are small quality-of-life improvements we can make that are simple and yield immediate results. We looked at three this week: Get rid of things that aren’t essential Produce a minimally viable version as quickly and simply as possible...

Back in episode 44 I shared the story that drives me in which I talked about Kelli, an assistant principal who was overwhelmed with discipline. I visited her around 10:00 o'clock on a spring morning in her rural elementary school and she already had seven office referrals. When I asked Kelli how many of those referrals reflected teacher problems more than kid problems she said five. The bad news w...

If you get my daily email, you already know that this week’s messages involved me going head-to-head with ChatGPT on the topic of creating a positive organizational culture. What I didn’t have space to discuss in the emails is how we can use the framework of the six dimensions of organizations to help provide a more coherent understanding of organizational culture. So today’s five for Friday will...

At the beginning of this school year, North Carolina embarked on a two-year, $90-million journey to train every elementary and teachers and administrator in a program called LETRS, which aligns to Science of Reading standards, a research-based approach to teaching reading. The training focuses on building a knowledge base about how students learn to read, as opposed to being a collection of strate...

Famous leadership theorist and author John Maxwell said, “leadership s influence, nothing less, nothing more.” Is that it? Is that really all leadership is? 

When I say “People before Purpose” what do I actually mean? When I say the silver bullet -the one truly magical solution – is to build relationships, what does that look like? Today we will unpack two relationship forms. Congenial relationships are based on personal connections, while collegial relationships are based on professional connections. We will dig deeper into each of these and into how...

Today’s episode of Five for Friday recaps the strategic leadership emails for the week of April 10-14, 2023.

Saying that great leaders are great listeners has almost become cliché. Listening is one of those things that sounds simple, but which can be challenging to execute – especially when all the craziness is happening. Part of the challenge is that listening requires presence – full presence. I’m going to ask you for something special today. Today, as you listen to this podcast, don’t just listen. Rea...

If I can’t do everything, doesn’t that mean that I choose what does get done – and what doesn’t? And if I’m choosing, do my choices reflect my values? These three ideas make up my three epiphanies: I can’t do everything Therefore, I choose what gets done And my choices do – or should – reflect my values Today’s episode of Five for Friday recaps the strategic leadership emails for the week of April...