From Teacher to Leader: Finding Your Way as a First-Time Leader without Losing Your Mind

by Starr Sackstein

Teachers want to be heard and appreciated.

Conduct tons of classroom walkthroughs to watch learning—not to evaluate the teachers on your team—to determine if learning and goals are being addressed and to connect with teachers and students. The more you are in classrooms, the more you can catch “awesome” happening.

Be the leader who makes the offer—and does it.

When co-planning isn’t appropriate, maybe you can model a lesson or be a guest reader in a class.

So I had to learn to protect myself and share less, even though it wasn’t what I wanted.

For the most part it will continue because you are no longer part of us. Now you are one of them—like a Sith from the Dark Side coming to ruin everyone’s life.

it definitely takes time to get your team to believe you aren’t one of them.

It’s okay to be outgoing, but you don’t have to share everything right away. Make sure to carefully consider the people you work with.

Always go into rooms with a smile on your face and make sure to follow up afterward with a note or an email saying something specific about what you saw. Initially, keep these notes positive, saying something genuine about what you saw. These notes are an entry point to a much larger conversation transpiring over time.

Because teachers aren’t recognized positively enough, this is a benefit to them and to you.

While I spend no more than eight minutes in a class, what I’ve loved most about doing walkthroughs is observing student learning and the rapport students have with their teachers.

Later I write the teacher a thank-you note including something specific I enjoyed or something especially helpful for the students.

It’s extremely important my teachers know I’m there to support them and work with them to build better learning environments for the students. I don’t want them to feel anxious when they see me come in; I want them to feel good.

want teachers to continue to reflect on their goals and areas they are working on and let me know about them so I can provide specific feedback the way I did with the students in my classroom. Positive, sincere, and specific feedback is a powerful tool to let teachers know I see—and appreciate—what they are doing.

What are your team members’ passions? How can you leverage those passions for the benefit of the team?

group. How can you do this? Holding informal conversations is a great way to start, but you can also survey them, asking them pointed and anonymous questions. Gathering these data will help you determine the best when and how to approach the change.

I had a conversation with another leader on our team this year, helping put this in perspective. She was masterful at anticipating what her team was going to complain about and systematically addressed those complaints, making it impossible for the team to say no; for example, if teachers often complained about not having enough time, she planned ahead to give them time during their professional periods so they could collaborate without taking up their personal time. She’d communicate in an email the plan and their options to make it easier.

respond to situations more positively. This year I needed to be a listener, a problem solver, and a supporter.

It’s important for leaders to be positive when working with teachers and not think any person is intentionally making choices to hurt kids. Assume teachers think they are doing the right thing, and build on this interest.

Getting into classrooms helps me develop relationships with the team and the students, and I get to be part of what I love about learning: the conversations, the mess, and the creativity.

Survey your team early to learn how they best like to receive feedback and support and then try to honor them accordingly.

These folks liked to have their good job celebrated, but privately or in writing—not for the world to see.

Words have energy and power with the ability to help, to heal, to hinder, to hurt, to harm, to humiliate, and to humble.

I’m a natural peacemaker who doesn’t enjoy conflict of any kind. While conflict can, of course, be productive, it can also be destructive if it isn’t handled diplomatically and in a timely fashion.

Power dynamics are at play when you’re a leader. The most important and enduring advice I can offer in this context is don’t try to wish them away. Acknowledge them, but don’t allow them to control how you interact with the folks on your team.

energy, I choose to listen and write down the teacher’s complaints and concerns.

Changes in leadership can make staff uncomfortable, especially if the prior administrator handled things very differently.

patience is necessary. I struggle with this wait time.

Daily Reflections for Change What seeds have you planted this year that are finally starting to grow? How do you deal with confrontations as a leader? How have they been excellent learning experiences for everyone? Think about one difficult conversation you had this year. What made it hard? How did you approach it? What did you learn from it? How would you handle it differently next time? What does good teaching look like to you? Is your vision shared by your team? How do you know? How can we better align our expectations with those whom we work with?

Build a culture where sharing stories is an expectation among the team and an opportunity for all members to share in the great things happening in their neighbors’ classrooms.

asked

This year we started doing lesson studies, an opportunity for three or four teachers to plan a lesson together, teach it in one of their classrooms, debrief, and then teach it again in a different teacher’s classroom. The point is to focus on a particular strategy and see how it impacts student learning. It allows more teachers to collaborate to develop more inclusive, student-centered learning experiences.

Because we wanted the teachers to own the experience, the administrators were not part of this process.

I’m my own worst critic. I often harshly judge myself and expect wildly unrealistic things from myself. I’ve always been more forgiving of others and more capable of seeing and praising their successes than my own. My self-reflections are critical. After situations occur, I immediately think, How could I have done better?

Rather than stay the course just to see something through, I abandoned the failed plan and tried to salvage the remaining time.

You get to determine what this new position is going to be and how it will create learning and other opportunities for you in the future.

challenges to set meaningful goals for the future. I will also try not to be too hard on myself when things don’t go as hoped the first time.

than you originally thought. I’m much better at praising other people than applauding myself, but honestly, I’m proud of my first year—struggles, mistakes, and successes.