It’s O.K. to sit back and learn
I’ve been an administrator for 2.5 years. This is my first true administrative position in education. My decade plus prior was spent in the classroom teaching students at various levels and from various backgrounds. 1.5 of those 2.5 years have been filled with COVID 19. Another 8 months of that time has found me without a true principal leading my building as she was out on a medical leave. As a leader in this time it has felt imperative to help find or have the solutions to every problem that has arisen in my building.
WRONG...
Young leaders of education, it is O.K. to sit back a little and learn. Don’t compromise your own style, goals, or objectives but do not feel the need to fix and do everything. Let me give you an example from my last 18 months. Serving as assistant principal in a middle school that was reinvigorating itself and working on transforming to meet the needs of 21st century learners there was no lack of new things that I was helping to oversee in my building. Then suddenly the building principal had a medical emergency and all of the additional issues that she would normally handle landed on my desk in addition to my duties. I felt ill equipped to handle some things, and was using a fire extinguisher to try and put out a forest fire in order to keep the building operating and push us to the level that I knew was important in our vision.
Fast forward, a full time interim principal is appointed at my building and while she is not 100% versed on all that we are trying to do and the processes, I am able to forward many issues on to her desk as appropriate. At first it was weird to “give up” some level of leadership but what I quickly learned was that I was still being included in everything even though I did not have to make the decision or handle the situation. In fact, we debriefed regularly and the first question she would often ask me was “did you see what I did there?” Through this process I learned to sit back and observe. I learned valuable lessons and the skills I picked up were beyond beneficial to my long term career as an educational leader.
Being a young leader often feels like you’ve got to “prove” that you deserve the job and can do it but, in fact there are often times when the opposite is a stronger option. So, young education leaders, I offer you the following advice,
Sit back, “relax”, pay attention, and learn.
You will prove yourself to be an even more valuable leader because of it.
