3 Mistakes School Directors make in the beginning of the year

It’s August and with that brings a breath of fresh air as the new school year is around the corner. It also bring on worry, anxiety, overwhelm and frustration for many teachers and school leaders.
More than anything is the FEAR- the fear that this year will be a repeat of last year.
All the same issues and complications that the director dealt with might creep up again and that thought is enough to trigger fear in every director’s mind.
How do we avoid that?
How can a school director take the necessary steps and not repeat mistakes?
Here are the 3 most common mistakes I see school directors make.
- Meeting Mash Up- For the first staff meeting, school directors lump all the topics and agenda they want to discuss into one long meeting. This overworks the brain cells of the teachers, makes them frustrated because there is no way they can remember anything you said. And it makes you frustrated because when they don’t follow through you wonder why no one listens to you?!
The solution?
- Break up meeting topics into small micro meetings — This means that if you are discussing policies and expectations — that should be one meeting. When you want to discuss classroom environment that’s a separate meeting. Discussing parent procedures and relationships with parents — again that is a separate meeting.
- The reasoning behind this is by separating the meeting topics you are creating separate boxes in the teacher’s brain to digest and process information.
- I talk more about follow up and accountability from meetings here
2. Yearly Theme — In the start of the school year all the teachers and directors are excited about new opportunity and possibility. Unless you harness this with a core theme that will drive decisions, meetings, events etc. you fall right back to old ways. “Old habits die hard” and if you want to break them — then choosing a core theme will pave the way for this.
The solution?
- Choose a theme that correlates with issues from last year that you want to put an end to. For example one director I work with chose the theme “Getting it Done” In the previous year her staff would take forever to get things done and she was guilty of it as well.
- She would procrastinate on important tasks and deadlines all the time. To ensure it wouldn’t repeat itself she chose this theme.
How is she making sure it visible everywhere and it becomes a central focus?
The teaches are creating a sign that highlights their theme and it will be updated with pictures of teachers in action “Getting it Done”
- In addition, the director has committed to giving feedback to teachers in relation to the theme. For example when she sees a teacher getting it done, she plans to say “Thank you for doing this, it reflects our theme of “Getting it Done” and I appreciate the effort you made.” These simple acts drives the consistency of the message home to each teacher!
3. Not Making time for Personal days — If you have been in a leadership position for some time now that you have probably felt the feeling of burnout or just that feeling that you don’t have an ounce of strength left.
Even worse — you get upset at yourself that you feel this way, because you love your job and you are passionate about what you do. So then why do you feel this way?
Because you go too long without a personal day!
The solution?
Block out dates on the calendar that will be your personal days. Pre-block it. Not when you are sick and reached the end of your line — do it BEFORE you get there.
That is when the personal day has it’s real effect and impact.
- Open your calendar and count 4–6 weeks from the first day of school.
- Then block out the first 2 hours of the morning or the last 2 hours of the day as personal time.
- You can decide what you do with it when it comes.
One director I worked with lives in a beach town and she blocks out every 6 weeks to come into work 2 hours later and goes walking on the beach. She has an assistant director and admin team that are super capable and she has learned to let go and delegate so she can enjoy this time.
Better yet- she is slowly learning how to do this guilt free.
To learn more effective strategies on how to get the year started right
check out the 3 Day Bootcamp for school directors