How Much Teaching Experience Before Becoming a Principal?

how much teaching experience should you have to have to become a principal or should you have to have any at all?

I've heard of just a few cases where somebody had no teaching experience at all.

Like maybe they were a counselor or maybe they somehow came in from another field.

And I know that's something that happens a little bit in the charter world, but I've heard of few enough cases that worked out well that I think that you should be able to become a principal without any teaching experience.

Like I just think generally, That's not a good thing.

I think you do need teaching experience, but how much is the right amount?

I've heard people say 10 years, seven years.

I think in most states, the minimum to enter a teacher certificate or excuse me, a principal certification program is three years.

And personally, I taught for four years before starting my principal certification program and then was kind of a Dean for two years.

And that served as my internship.

And then in my sixth, after six years, I became a principal.

And honestly, I would have become a better teacher if I had stayed in the classroom longer.

I mean, that's just the bottom line.

If I had stayed six, seven, eight years, I think I would have been a better teacher.

And would that have made me a better principal?

I mean, probably.

I think we have to be careful about hard and fast rules, though, because I've come across a lot of people who were teachers for 10 or 20 years and who were very, very good teachers and then were just terrible principles, frankly.

I think the skill sets are just different enough that one does not automatically...

More years of experience as a teacher does not directly translate into better preparation or being a better principal.

But let me know what you think about this because certainly there is a point where it's like you don't really know enough about the job to lead the job effectively.

And I never felt that aspect.

Like I felt like I understood school and teaching plenty well enough after four years.

I just didn't feel that I was like personally...

as good a teacher as as i would ever be and one of the reasons that i made that decision at that time was like i probably needed to change jobs in some way like move to a different school or one of the the leading options for me at that time was to leave the profession entirely and go into tech i lived in seattle and a lot of my friends were going to work for tech companies and that would have been a very easy change for me to make or i could have gone to like law school or something like i probably was not going to stay in that job that i was in forever and i think you know, if you're ever in that situation where you feel the need to do something different, like one possibility I wish I had considered was just changing schools.

So if you were in a school where you feel like you just can't keep up with the, you know, you can't keep this up, the stress is too high or whatever, instead of leaving the profession, one thing I would really encourage you to think about is finding a different place to work.

There are always new options out there to keep doing what you're doing, but just in a different organization.

But let me know what you think about this question of experience, because I am definitely not of the opinion that you should have to have 20 or 30 years of experience, that you should have to be a certain age, I think, There is certainly a benefit to being older than some of your staff.

But frankly, when I was hired as a principal, I was younger than almost all of my staff.

And I don't think that was really a problem.

I think what does become a problem is attitude.

Like if I had...

gone in expecting to kind of boss people around in a disrespectful way.

I think that would have gone poorly.

But I think that would have gone poorly even if I was much older.

I just probably would have gotten away with it.

Whereas I probably wouldn't have gotten away with it being quite young.

I started when I was 27.

So let me know what you think about this.

What's the right amount?

What's the sweet spot for maybe a rule about this?

Is that three-year rule that you have to have three years of experience as a teacher?

before you can become a principal?

Is that a good rule?

Should we have a higher minimum?

And what do you think is kind of the best, you know, the best career plan for somebody who is considering that?

Not just in terms of, you know, the best timing for them personally, but like what makes you a good leader?

How does experience factor into that?

Let me know what you think.