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Are you feeling swamped by the demands of being a principal? From juggling emails, calls, and decisions to boosting test scores and wading through endless paperwork, the pressure is real.
But imagine a scenario where you no longer feel this overwhelming stress. Picture yourself as a more resilient leader, concentrating on enhancing your school rather than merely coping with the daily tasks that currently consume your time.
I‘m Barb Flowers. Drawing upon my eight-year experience as an elementary principal, with a Ph.D. in Educational Leadership and certification as a life coach, Along the way, I've mentored and coached school leaders, guiding them to change their mindset, set boundaries and focus on their own well-being while navigating their roles.
Each episode offers practical insights on time management, communication, overcoming overwhelm, boosting confidence, and fostering a positive mindset. We'll also discuss topics like working with stakeholders, implementing new initiatives, and managing discipline. Let's set boundaries, focus on well-being, and reignite your passion for being a principal. Welcome to "The Principal's Handbook."
I firmly believe that to be an impactful educator, you must first become a confident and well-rounded individual. Join us in this journey to empower and enhance your confidence as a school leader.
# Your Calendar Is Showing Your Real Leadership Priorities
Today, we're going to talk about how your calendar is showing your real priorities as a principal.
I hear principals say all the time that they want to be better instructional leaders. They want to get into classrooms more. They want to be more proactive.
But if I look at their calendars, what I often see is reacting all day.
It's constant reaction.
Your calendar is evidence of what is important. If your calendar is filled with meetings, reacting to discipline, putting out fires, and doing other people's priorities, then that's what's actually running your leadership—not the things you want to do to be more proactive and lead your building in the way you would like to.
I want you to look at your calendar and ask yourself: Is it filled with the things you value most?
Because if it's not, that's a good sign that you're being reactive.
One practice I always recommend to principals is documenting everything in your calendar. I'm a big fan of Google Calendar, and I love being proactive by putting things on my calendar.
For example, in my last school, I had recess duty every day, so I always had that on my calendar. I put in when I wanted to get into classrooms, when I was going to have data meetings, and when I was going to attend grade-level meetings.
I always said, "If it's not on my calendar, it's not going to happen," because I use my calendar for everything.
Events pop up on my watch, and then I know what I need to do. As much as possible, I try to make my calendar reflect the things I want to do and the things I value.
But I also like to go back and fill in the unexpected things that happened. Maybe I was dealing with a bus incident for an hour and a half or handling several behavior situations. I'll go back and add those things because I want to know what I was actually doing that day.
Again, it's evidence of what my leadership looks like in my building.
I use my calendar almost like a time audit, and I've done this in two different ways.
In the past, I would print my weekly calendar from Google Calendar and document what I did each day on the paper version. I saved those calendars so I could go back and look at how I was spending my time.
More recently, I simply go back through each day and electronically add the things I did to my calendar. Then the documentation is there.
I even do this in my personal life so I can remember what I did. We're so busy that we forget: What day did that happen? When did I do this? When did I have that appointment?
Even if something didn't need to be on your calendar because it was a last-minute situation, having that documentation can be really helpful.
But I want you to think about what's on your calendar and what you're scheduling because your calendar is telling the truth.
So often, principals say, "I want to be in PLCs, but I don't have time," or, "I want to spend time having data conversations with teachers."
The only way you're ever going to do that is to schedule it on your calendar and protect that time.
Look at what's on your calendar. If there's something you're really trying to do in your leadership, where is it scheduled?
Maybe it's even time for reflection—a reflection block to think about the one or two priorities you're focusing on this year.
I've been talking a lot about subtracting things from your leadership. But if we're going to be really clear and consistent with something, we also need time to make sure we're following through with those one or two initiatives.
Is that time blocked off on your calendar?
Because if it's not scheduled, it's always going to lose to something that feels more urgent.
We have to stop giving our priorities leftover time and actually schedule them into our calendars to make sure they get done.
I want you to audit your week.
If you're not in school yet and you're listening to this in the summer, think back to a week from last school year. If you can, pull up your calendar and look at it.
What do you see?
Meetings other people scheduled?
Meetings that could have been an email?
Maybe you have too many meetings that don't need to happen.
I noticed this with committee meetings. We were meeting monthly because that's what my first school did. But then I realized that at my last school, we didn't need to meet monthly. We could probably meet quarterly.
So that's what we started doing because I never wanted to have a meeting that could have been an email.
That saved us a lot of time.
Then look at whether you're scheduling back-to-back commitments with no breaks. I'm guilty of being an overscheduler. If I let other people schedule things on my calendar, especially IEP meetings and similar commitments, sometimes I look at my calendar and everything is back-to-back.
I want to look at that and ask: What can we do to keep this from happening?
First, I don't like sitting in meetings all day. I want to be out and about.
Second, I want to give myself time to handle things in the building.
The more visible you are, the more proactive you can be when it comes to behavior.
I like to schedule time to be at recess and lunch because, as an elementary principal, a lot of behaviors come from unstructured times, especially recess.
If you're out there, you're being proactive instead of potentially dealing with an hour-and-a-half behavior situation after recess.
Think about what's taking up a lot of your time and what you could do proactively to reduce it.
If you have a day with nothing on your calendar or a large open block of time, make sure you're deciding what's going to happen during that time.
Maybe you have an assistant principal and you want time to meet and talk with them. Maybe it's your counselor or someone else on your team.
If you don't schedule that time, it's probably not going to happen.
Remember, a busy calendar is not the same as an intentional, proactive calendar.
An intentional calendar requires you to think about what needs to be on your calendar, why it needs to be there, and whether it's actually helping you lead the way you want to lead.
The next thing I want you to think about is: Where is the proactive work on your calendar?
What are the things that are proactive for you?
Like I said, it might be being outside at recess. It might be being visible in the building. It could be getting into classrooms and having conversations with teachers.
I always found that when I was walking around the building and getting into classrooms regularly, teachers would have conversations with me and say, "Oh, I was going to send you an email, but since I see you..."
Being proactive and visible in the building meant people didn't have to email me all the time.
Even that saves time because I'm not sitting in my office responding to emails.
What coaching conversations do you want to have?
What data meetings do you want to be part of?
What's the one initiative you want to follow up on?
Who do you need to have a conversation with so you can keep working on that initiative and stay consistent with it?
What do you need to do to be more proactive?
Because if all your time is spent reacting, you're never going to have time to create the systems that reduce the things you're reacting to.
You have to have time to think about your leadership and be proactive.
Sometimes the way to have fewer fires isn't to get better at putting them out. It's to schedule time to fix the cause of the fires.
Get to the root cause of what's happening and start fixing it.
I think about this a lot when it comes to behavior and our PBIS systems.
Put the proactive work on your calendar.
Maybe you need to help your staff. One thing I did last year was create PowerPoint slides for staff to reteach behavior expectations.
I noticed that the staff I worked with would do a lot of teaching if it was through a slideshow. If they could easily put up a slideshow and have a conversation with students, I knew they would do it.
So I spent time working on our expectations that way, and I had the PBIS team review them.
Think about where you can spend your time being more proactive.
Another thing I want you to think about when it comes to your calendar—and something that can reduce a lot of stress—is where you're creating impossible standards for yourself.
I'm so guilty of overscheduling myself because I feel like I have a high capacity to get a lot done in a day.
But there was a period of time when I was trying to get all my observations done in such a short window that I wasn't even having meaningful conversations with teachers.
I had made the process about getting it done.
I was trying to fit too many people into a short amount of time.
I only like to schedule two teachers per week for full observations.
That really helps me because I'm able to schedule the pre-conference, complete the observation, and have the post-conference all within that week.
I can have meaningful conversations without everything stacking up and suddenly having five or six observations that leave me feeling burned out.
Think about this with IEP meetings too.
If you're working with intervention specialists who need you to attend an IEP meeting, have the conversation that even if the meeting is still within the deadline, it needs to be scheduled in advance.
You don't want to end up with five IEP meetings in one day because that's the only time left on your calendar.
Don't create an impossible calendar.
First, it doesn't allow you to be visible in the building.
Second, it doesn't give you any time when an unexpected situation arises.
I always say that as a principal, it's good to block off some space in your day so you have room to handle things when they happen.
Where it gets stressful is when we have no space in our calendars and a situation comes up. Suddenly, you feel like you can't even handle it because your schedule is packed.
Instead of five observations a week, schedule two.
If visiting every classroom every day is too much, visit one grade level per day or a few classrooms per day.
Instead of blocking off one huge afternoon for instructional leadership, schedule smaller blocks throughout the week.
Make it realistic for you.
Pick chunks of time that are actually going to work because it's about consistency over intensity.
You don't want long blocks of instructional leadership that you can't maintain.
Focus on consistency over intensity.
As you're building your calendar each week, think about what matters first.
What is the proactive work?
Before the week fills up, think about what you can schedule into your day.
Maybe it's even looking further ahead.
At the beginning of the school year, I like to go through my calendar and put in all my dates for committee meetings.
The new school I'm at likes to schedule IEPs and ETRs at the beginning of the year, which I think is such a great practice. They get everything scheduled because we already know the dates when those things are due.
We know when they have to be completed.
Scheduling them ahead of time gives us so much more flexibility.
Then think about the work connected to your biggest priority.
If your priority is improving reading instruction, maybe you schedule time to get into classrooms during reading blocks.
Maybe you schedule time to have conversations with teachers during PLCs about reading.
Another thing I used to schedule all the time was when I would follow up with new teachers.
We always had new teacher orientation at the beginning of the year, but I wanted to be proactive and meet with new teachers throughout the year. So I scheduled those follow-up meetings on my calendar.
Again, protect some space in your calendar.
Don't make it so jam-packed that you don't have a second to breathe, handle an unexpected situation, or simply get up and walk around the building.
Protect some space so you're not back-to-back-to-back all day.
Then allow the other things to fill in around your priorities.
If you can schedule the most important things first, that's how you're going to become more proactive in your leadership.
That's how you're going to become the leader you want to be because your calendar is being filled with the things you actually want to do in your leadership.
As we wrap up this episode, I want you to think about this:
What does your calendar tell me about you?
What does it tell me about your priorities?
How does it show who you are as a leader?
If someone looked at the next 30 days of your calendar, what would they think matters to you most?
Start thinking about what proactive leadership could look like on your calendar.
I think about my husband. He hates scheduling things. He hates using a calendar because he feels constrained by it. He likes the freedom to do things when he wants.
But I always say that a calendar and a schedule create freedom.
For me, they create freedom because I can schedule my priorities first.
I feel this in my personal life too, not just at school.
As I'm recording this, it's summer. If I have a day off work, I still schedule my priorities for the day, even if I have nothing else on my calendar.
Otherwise, my kids and I will lay around, nothing will get done, and I'll get to the end of the day and be upset.
If I want to get something done, if I want to be proactive, or if I want to make sure we have a fun summer, I'm scheduling it on the calendar because my calendar shows my priorities.
I want you to focus on that.
If you want more information on how to create a schedule, get better with time blocking, feel in control of your calendar, and become more proactive, check out my course, the 8 to 4 Principal Blueprint.
In the course, I talk about time blocking and planning two weeks ahead. I give you tools to improve your time management, plan your days and weeks, and look ahead at the coming months so you can create a calendar that reflects who you want to be as a leader.
As we end today, remember:
The best principals aren't the ones who do the most. They're the ones who know what to subtract.
I hope everyone has a great week, and I'll see you here next week.