Prioritizing Instructional Leadership: Keep the Main Thing the Main Thing!

"Many principals say their priority is instructional leadership, but everyone in the building knows your priorities by where you spend your time and how effective you are by the impact you have on improving student learning." - McLaurin (2020) The Principal's Playbook on Instructional Leadership: 23 Things that Matter Most for Improving Student Achievement  

As we end the 2^nd week of the 2020-21 school year and enjoy a long Labor Day weekend, we are releasing a series of videos and posts on FB and the school website to help our student, parents, and community understand the shift in the way we facilitate education.  To me, this has been a fun and exciting opportunity to make a fundamental shift in instructional facilitation.  This is the fun and enjoyable part of the job in seeing everyone in the school grow professionally and work together for the singular purpose of providing the best possible education in the safest possible learning environment.  School should be somewhere teachers and students want to come; it should be where learning is both fun and engaging.  For many people, this has been a scary and stressful process, but it all depends on your mindset and perception of our reality.  I have truly enjoyed this part of the process so far and am extremely proud of how well teachers have adapted to teach students through blended and virtual learning.  We’ve called it “The Digital Era of Instructional Innovation.” This is a time where people look to instructional leadership for both innovation and support/guidance. It’s our job, as principals, to provide that instructional leadership for our schools. 

While most principals know there is a priority on instructional leadership, it is often overshadowed by school managerial demands. It is essential that school leaders learn to manage prioritizing instructional leadership as well as the managerial facets of the job. The heart of the role of the principal is student safety and teaching/learning. The main thing in every school should be student learning and instructional leaders at all levels keep that as the focus.  Instructional leadership takes a commitment, in terms of time and focus, from the principal.  Effective principals know how to ensure the managerial and operational facets of the school support the teaching and learning process and protect instructional time. Principals, as instructional leaders, should spend a minimum of 50% and target of 75% of their time devoted to improving student achievement through improving and supporting effective teaching and learning practices.  This means not just spending time on instruction, but spending time that improves instruction.  True instructional leaders put learning in the forefront and emphasize the need to prioritize learning for all.

Principals must be able to shift gears quickly and complete tasks in a compartmentalized way throughout the day, always keeping teaching and learning at the forefront. Principals need to make distinctions about what is more important and what is less important to prioritize the things that matter most to improving student achievement. Oftentimes, it is difficult to prioritize or filter through all of the fragmented situations that arise daily in making the school run effectively.  The role of the principal, as the instructional leader, is to make sure that the ship gets to the right destination, not just manage the ship to make sure it runs effectively.  Every school principal operates within the same time constraints. The most effective principals, in terms of improving student academic achievement, are instructional leaders and place instructional leadership as their top priority.

 Instructional leaders understand which practices yield the highest gains in student achievement and work for fidelity of best practice instruction across the entire school. Many principals give lip service in calling themselves instructional leaders, but everyone in the building knows what your priorities are by where you spend your time, more importantly the impact that time and effort has on improving student learning. 

“Leadership and management must coincide; leadership makes sure that the ship gets to the right place; management makes sure that the ship (crew and cargo) is well run” (Day, Harris, Hadfield, Tolley, & Beresford, 2000, pp. 38-39).