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. Today’s episode of Five for Friday recaps the strategic leadership emails for the week of August 22-26, 202. If you already get my daily leadership emails, then I hope you’ll find some added value here and if you don’t already subscribe you can find a link on my home page at frederickbuskey.com. Many readers like to begin their mornings by reading the email and setting a leadership intention for the day, but please don’t feel any pressure to subscribe. You are already doing more to grow yourself than many others out there, simply by listening to the podcast.

Recap…

Monday:

·      Backpacking story

·      What do we mean when we say we can’t do something?

o   Don’t want to

o   It is physically impossible

o   It is not a priority

·      I’m going to monitor my “I can’t” statements, I hope you will as well.

Tuesday

Interview of Craig Martin Executive Director of the Bridge Boston Charter School in Roxbury (Boston) Massachusetts.

The one takeaway - Play quote

We put our heads down – need to reflect on who we are and to be kind to ourselves even when our actions don’t produce out intentions.

Wednesday

Water tanks capture excess capacity to use when needed. How do we do that in leadership?

·      Building the leadership capacity of others adds extra capacity to the system.

·      Creating standard operating processes allows us to do more accurately in high demand times.

·      Investing time in identifying root problems allows us to focus our energies more efficiently.

Thursday

Another podcast quote from Leigh Ann Alford-Keith who leads in Charlotte-Mecklenburg system her in NC.

“It is a both-and, not either-or. You don’t have to think of engaging families or supporting your teachers. You can think of ‘how will engaging families support my teachers.’”

Opposition is a sign of mis-alignment

Friday

Beautiful hike into the Blue Ridge Mountains, foggy hike out

·      I knew the view even though I couldn’t see

·      I trusted that I knew the path

·      But as leaders, how do we navigate?

Takeaway

The tensions of leadership:

·      How do we build, increase, and then sustain our leadership capacity?

·      How do we know when to trust our knowledge and experience, and when to pause and be cautious?

·      How do we maintain clarity, not only of our own mission, but of the school’s mission, and the roles of all the people that make up our school community?

While daunting, this week’s messages also offer us hope. The consistent message is that the power lies with us. We get to choose, and when we understand ourselves, we are better able to make choices that sustain not only our schools, but ourselves as well. 

This wraps up this week’s Five for Friday rendition of The Assistant Principal Podcast. If you enjoyed today’s show, please subscribe and rate this podcast. Rating the podcast really does help other people to find it.

I’m always trying to improve the show, so if you have feedback please email me at [email protected]. If you’d like to find out more about what I’m doing to support assistant principals, you can head over to my website at frederickbuskey.com/theassistantprincipal.

I’m Frederick Buskey and I hope you’ll join me next time for the Assistant Principal Podcast.