I am grateful for the support of Kristen Cunard, who accepted and encouraged my choice to become a teacher, just as she accepted and encouraged me, with loving faith, that things would somehow work out. My daughters Candace and Corinne, both of whom became better English teachers and much better writers than me, are inspirations themselves who consistently encouraged me to write my own book one...

This book is about how to succeed and thrive as a school principal. You would think that books about how to do this abound, but my search for practical advice led me to very few works. During the ten years I served as a principal, I read what wisdom I could find about being a successful principal, but very little of my reading seemed to adequately capture the dynamics of the principal’s...

Stanford University professor Michael Copland best described the challenge of being a principal when he suggested these qualifications for the position:

While being a successful principal is difficult, being selected to serve as a principal can be an even more daunting challenge. The selection process is notoriously subjective, and it can be fraught with politics. In some communities, the selection of a new principal can even become a compromise between the teachers’ union, the board of trustees, interests in the community, and the...

The new principal faces a number of daunting challenges that arrive quickly; among them are the following:

The new principal soon becomes very, very busy. There are dozens of people to meet, an entire community to get to know and understand, and a school to open, usually within just a few weeks. While the publication and implementation of an entry plan will go a long way toward making this initial work easier, there is still important work to do that is not part of the entry plan.

Once school has settled and is running, safety and order is attended to, and the entry plan work is nearing completion, the new principal reaches a point where she will find herself looking for answers to a compelling question: What will be her strategy to improve student academic achievement in her school? How the principal contemplates this question and ultimately responds to it will go a long...

A school principal is a prominent, studied, and much discussed public servant. While teachers are prominent in the dinner table discussions of a few families, the principal, at times, ends up in the dinner table discussions of hundreds and, occasionally, thousands of people. The brave men and women who leave teaching for school administration—and make no mistake, they are...

Public school systems are entirely designed to get about 30 children into a well-equipped room with a skilled teacher. Once that’s complete, the most important work is done day in and day out by the teachers. And even though the teacher is never really alone, her work can be pretty lonely. She sees very few adults during her work day, has a rushed lunch break of about 20 actual minutes, and...

The school principal’s success and that of his students is directly related to t~he degree of motivation unleashed in the staff at his school. A motivated, engaged staff will work harder, call in sick less often, collaborate more effectively, and be more likely to change the lives of students for the better. The question of what motivates people...

Many who move from teaching into administration come to miss the flow experience of their best classroom days. They may particularly miss flow early in their careers while serving as assistant principals. The person who transitions into formal school-wide leadership still needs to be focused on flow: not necessarily her own sense of flow, but on helping others in the building achieve it.

The principal’s tenure in a school does not always come to an ordinary conclusion. Over the course of a career in schools, I saw quite a few principal departures, several of which were quite notable:

Robert Cunard grew up in Southern California and attended the University of California, Berkeley, where he earned a degree in rhetoric and was a member of the rowing team. Upon graduation, he returned to Southern California and~ began a career as a secondary English teacher. During his 15 years as a classroom teacher, Robert taught in urban...