A Principal's Dilemma: Theory And Reality Of School Redesign

LESSONS

In addition to the questions I ask myself, colleagues pepper me with their own. What are the lessons I learned? Can I distill them into a list that might be helpful to others? What did Ifind to be the essential elements of school change? These are all important questions, ones that could lead me back toward the university perspective. But we already have a large library of excellentbooks about the theory and practice of school change - leadership, decision making, professional development, and so on. I don't think I learned anything that isn't in a book somewhere or that I didn'talready know in theory. What I did do was relearn ordinary, essential lessons about school change and leadership in an intensely personal way. I learned, very acutely, not just how hard school changeand leadership are, but how personal.

I now know in my bones that a principal's chief responsibility is to shape and keep the vision, not just to preach it but to personify it, to make it comealive and stay alive. That's what my work was about. The three guiding principles kept me focused. I always knew why we were changing, and every faculty and staff member knew that these principles droveour work. They may not have agreed with this platform, but there was no confusion about why we were changing.

I seized an opportunity and ran as hard and as long as I could with it. I taught astudent course because I believed that all adults in a school should teach - and because I missed teaching. I picked up trash because I believed that we shared collective responsibility for thecleanliness of our school. Our every action - not just out rhetoric - should reflect the principles and the vision that drive us. A secretary, explaining to a caller that I was out at lunch talking with thestudents and picking up trash, said, "She never asks anyone to do what she won t do herself." I know that some scoffed at me, but the work of building a community and focusing on serious learning was,...