Leader Ready: Four Pathways to Prepare Aspiring School Leaders

[00:01] Announcer:

Welcome to Principal Center Radio, helping you build capacity for instructional leadership. Here's your host, Director of the Principal Center, Dr. Justin Bader. Welcome, everyone, to Principal Center Radio.

[00:13] SPEAKER_01:

I'm your host, Justin Bader, and I'm honored to welcome to the program Dr. Tim Cusack. and Vince Bustamante, authors of Leader Ready, Four Pathways to Prepare Aspiring School Leaders. Tim has more than 30 years of experience as an educator and naval warfare officer with the Royal Canadian Navy Reserve and currently serves as Dean of Education at Concordia University of Edmonton. Vince is an instructional coach, curriculum content developer, and author who resides in Calgary, Canada, who's co-authored two bestselling books with Corwin, Great Teaching by Design and the Assessment Playbook for Distance and Blended Learning. And they have teamed up on Leader Ready, Four Pathways to Prepare Aspiring School Leaders, which we're here to talk about today.

[00:52] Announcer:

And now, our feature presentation.

[00:54] SPEAKER_01:

Tim and Vince, welcome to Principal Center Radio.

[00:56] SPEAKER_00:

Thanks very much, Justin. Just happy to be here. Thanks, Justin. Really looking forward to the conversation.

[01:01] SPEAKER_01:

Well, I'm excited to talk about this book because you review some of the research on assistant principals in general. And I had to laugh a little bit when I saw this table summarizing the research by a decade on assistant principals. And every single row for each decade says more should be done to develop assistant principals, this important group of leaders. Why do we have this problem continually of knowing that we need to do something to develop assistant principals, and yet we're still kind of where we are? Take us into the situation with developing assistant principals as leaders.

[01:34] SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, so having been an assistant principal myself for many years, it was always interesting to get a sense of the types of professional learning that I saw my principal and other principals receiving versus what I was receiving. And so when I had an opportunity to do some doctoral studies, I really wanted to champion assistant principals, these aspiring school leaders with the hopes that one day they'll want to lead the school. And so when we looked at 50 years worth of research, and as you said, the summation at every decade was we should be doing more. A lot of great intention, definitely looking at the instructional leadership, the managerial leadership, that ethical moral leadership lens, but a lot of good talk. And it's not that nothing was done to help move the yardsticks forward per se, But there wasn't really any roll up your sleeves. Here's a model.

[02:23]

Here's an approach to tackle that and to actually provide assistant leaders, aspiring leaders, assistant principals with an actual process to deepen those skills. And Vince had a lot of background and information about implementation. So we were the perfect pairing to bring a new spin to the research to say, despite all these great intentions, let's actually do something about it.

[02:47] SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, I think too, just very briefly, because Tim always does such a great job of summarizing the research. In my line of work in working with assistant principals in both Canada and the United States, I find that the manifestation of this table of research is in the role of what some assistant principals feel, which is very like managerial, like The principal's in charge of the instruction, but if there's a behavior issue flaring up in the middle of the day, it's straight to the assistant principal's office. And I think part of that is just because all the research is saying we need to do more, we need to do more, we need to do more. And then there's an identity crisis a little bit of the assistant principal. What is my identity? Am I an instructional leader?

[03:24]

Am I just the behavior and timetable person? Am I out in the parking lot flagging things down? So that's kind of what we tried to read between the lines of some of this research and then provide our suggestions of what we think we should do to develop those assistant principals a little bit more.

[03:39] SPEAKER_01:

I like the idea that often when I'm working with aspiring administrators who have interviews coming up for an assistant principal position, one of the things I'll tell them is, districts don't hire assistant principals, they hire future principals. And I'm glad that you're approaching this with the perspective of leadership development, of having a pipeline. Because I feel like for so many people, it's exactly what you said, that being an assistant principal does not necessarily provide those leadership experiences and those opportunities because there is so much discipline and managerial work. And to some extent, that is by design, right? We want to free the principal up, you know, from some of those tasks. But at the same time, if that creates a situation where the assistant principal does not have those opportunities to develop, what does that do to the next generation of principals when it's all discipline all the time or all, you know, dealing with the fires that break out, so to speak, rather than the leadership issues?

[04:32]

So help us understand the relationship between the principal and the assistant principal as you envision it when it comes to that dynamic of the assistant principal needs to take things off the principal's plate. But at the same time, we want this to be a role where people can practice being principals.

[04:47] SPEAKER_00:

And I think for us, it really comes into that title assistant principal. It's not necessarily assistant to the principal. The word principal is the one that we take very serious there. And both of us came from a school division where there's approximately 100 schools. And when we talk about learning how every student deserves a great teacher by design, not by chance, we believe every school deserves a great principal by design and not by chance. And so in my role as a former deputy superintendent of leadership services, I was responsible for the leadership development and PD for 100 principals.

[05:20]

And my focus on them was you are the more knowledgeable other. You are the mentor for your assistant principals. But what we realized was there's a great variability from principal to principal and The phenomena of, well, I never got that training when I was an assistant principal, so you can figure it out on your own. We had to be better than that. And so we really leaned into what should every assistant principal know, understand, and be able to do? We tied that to our practice, professional practice standards, and created a series of guided learning leadership experiences that principals could deliver, could help facilitate, could help take that assistant principal under their wing and And really deepen the experiential learning to help them understand what does mastery look like so we can get you as ready as possible to take that next step into principalship.

[06:14] SPEAKER_02:

And I think the relationship extends beyond the assistant principal as well. We use the term aspiring leaders quite deliberately because most school districts, it's a very systematic kind of step-by-step approach. You have classroom teacher, permanent classroom teacher, teacher leader, assistant principal, principal. And our post-COVID reality is we have certain school districts who are having to scoop up classroom teachers and put them directly into principal positions. And so what we offered was this idea that there is alternate ways into the principalship. So the alternative pathways into a principalship.

[06:48]

So for example, my role led me into a district leadership position where I was a district curriculum consultant, and I sidestepped that role of an assistant principal, but I still should be. be getting appropriate preparation just in case I get scooped up. And so the relationship that exists there is the principal needs to recognize that, and Tim uses this all the time, so goes the principal, so goes the school. We need to prepare the supporting cast, whether that's an assistant principal or the instructional leadership team collectively, prepare them to be able to step into that role should something happen, or in the case of the kind of revolving door policy of some of our principals who are retiring, we have seats that we need to fill and we don't have enough qualified people to fill them.

[07:35] SPEAKER_01:

So in the book, you have kind of a diagram early on. It says the four roots of school leader preparation. And I hope we can talk about all of those. But I was struck by the first of them, that you start with leadership standards. Now, I'm familiar with what used to be called the ISLIC standards, showing my age here, the population. Professional Standards for Educational Leaders, or PSEL as they're known now.

[07:57]

But you actually looked at school leadership standards from around the world, US, Canada, Australia, and elsewhere. Take us into the intent and purpose of those standards and what you saw as some of the big themes internationally in leadership standards.

[08:10] SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, so really the standards provide a common language. They provide the touchstones back to what should every aspiring leader know, understand, and be able to do. And so it really gives us a good focal point of intentionality of what types of PD, what types of experience should we be planning? And to what extent can we scaffold that learning for those aspiring leaders towards more complexity that they could extend that learning? And so that's where our standards are so important. And so when we looked at the various standards around the world, we quickly noticed some common themes.

[08:42]

And so we looked at that instructional domain. We looked at that creating and leading the operations of a school. And so basically, when we looked at whether it's the PSEL standards in America, we looked at the head teacher standards in UK, we looked at the standards in Abu Dhabi, we saw that these themes were very specific to and lent themselves well to the leadership standard. And so from there, we branched out into the environment to implement that, which is Vince's expertise and background. And then we created a model that we could have principles, more knowledgeable others, lead their aspiring leaders in a very systematic approach towards mastery. And then, of course, celebrating that mastery and celebrating those little successes that will hopefully entice those aspiring leaders to want to take that step into principalship.

[09:32] SPEAKER_02:

And this was admittedly probably the most difficult chapter for us to write because we did take quite a deep dive. The table that's in the book that has US, Alberta, Australia, Abu Dhabi, and UK is exclusive in the sense that we looked at others as well. We had other countries that we looked at. And the more we peeled back the layers, the more we realized that, first of all, not all school districts adhere to leadership standards. So that's why we offered...

[10:02]

are four categories. So as Tim kind of touched upon the learning and engagement standard, resources and operations standard, community and culture standard, and the fourth is growth and innovation. So what we did is we kind of modeled the rest of the book around our provided standards, with the understanding that they all kind of fit into a greater standards document.

[10:24] SPEAKER_01:

I love the way that that can serve as kind of an agenda for an internship or for an assistant principal who is working with a principal. Because I think what your book is so helpful in helping people avoid is that dumping scenario, right? Where the assistant principal's duties are whatever the principal doesn't want to do or is not particularly good at, which is not necessarily the skill set that you need to become a principal, right? There's a complementarity certainly that is helpful, right? But if we're going to develop people as well-rounded leaders who are ready to assume the principalship, we've got to do better than that. So take us into the idea of helping people attain those experiences and those skills that they need with those standards in mind.

[11:06]

We know what principals need to succeed. Take us into the process of helping us be more intentional about giving assistant principals those experiences.

[11:15] SPEAKER_02:

Sure. So the third route is called guided leadership experiences, which is kind of where we rooted, my God, such a bad pun, but still, where we rooted our kind of focus on how are we constructing those experiences. So it's not unlike a gradual release of responsibility model in the classroom where the further along the student goes in the learning, the less handholding we have. It's the exact same for our aspiring leaders. So we take some time earlier in the book to dive deep into what is the skill, will, and thrill of our leaders. So Justin, if you're joining us as an assistant principal, we need to figure out who you are as a person and a leader first, rather than trying to kind of square peg, round hole you into some responsibilities.

[11:57]

And from there, then we can determine which standard do we need to develop a little bit more? So if it's resources and operations, then from there, you and I would co-construct those gradual release learning experiences. So we have what we call level one, level two, and level three guided leadership experiences. And the further along that we go, the less responsibility I have and the more responsibility you take. So just to give you an idea, if we were looking at like a community and engagement exercise and it had to do around a school council meeting. So your level one experience would just be fly on the wall.

[12:34]

Just watch your principal lead the school council meeting, right? Level two would be you take a little bit of the agenda and present some of that with me as your safety net. And then level three would be you take it completely. And I'm still there, but this is your show. This is your faculty meeting. And those experiences will help generate those mastery levels.

[12:55]

Now, it's obviously not a one and done situation. And so one of the things... that we talk about in the book specifically is not dumping all the standards into guided leadership experiences at the same time, which is, that's why it's so important to get to know who you are as a leader before we determine how we are going to design those leadership experiences.

[13:15] SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. And that's very important to Vince's point of knowing your people, what leadership experiences do they bring into the school community from the outside? Are they involved in a community organization, volunteering, military perhaps, like myself? We have leadership skills that we want to unlock, and we're even really looking into our classrooms and classroom teachers. So we have a saying of shine the leadership quality standards on your teachers, because every teacher leads a classroom, leads a learning community, leads the instructional design, and it's spotlighting, highlighting, accentuating the times when you see those teachers leading and saying, hey, have you ever thought about that next step? So part of our model for the level one, which is what can I read, watch, observe, two is kind of that you try, watch me, now let's try together, you try.

[14:05]

It's safe environment to make mistakes, to learn from those mistakes, to take risks, and ultimately building a platform of mastery across different domains, all related to the leadership standards. because then we're not leaving it to chance, we're harmonizing the approach. And I think this is important for systems leaders to know. If you have several schools, you know, a far flung rural division or a bunch in an urban area, you can use this model to build a consistent experience of professional learning and development across schools. So what should every assistant principal in your school division know, understand and be able to do? And so from our research, we looked at the ones most commonly asked for by aspiring leaders.

[14:51]

So the book is geared to look at a lot of the operational pieces, not just like the scheduling or the discipline, but also elements of community engagement, of building partnerships, looking at the regulation, looking at policy procedure, not just the two or three things that your principal is assigning you. So this really gives an opportunity for those aspiring leaders to get a broader basis of experiential learning, to help them feel more prepared when the time comes to assume the chair of principal, where we know they'll do even more learning. So our goal is to get them to a threshold where more will want to jump into school leadership. And we need more people to want to do that, given teacher shortages, leadership challenges that we're facing. So we want to build a very good reservoir of talent coming forward.

[15:42] SPEAKER_01:

And certainly, I want to acknowledge the existence and legitimacy of career assistant principals, that some people decide, I want to be an assistant principal. That is what I want to do. I don't want to become a principal. And I have to add on to that acknowledgment that there are often situations where, for whatever reason, the principal goes somewhat AWOL or just is not able to do all of the things that principals are supposed to do. So people who intended to remain assistant principals end up shouldering essentially both jobs at once, their own duties and the principal's duties. So I want to take the perspective of an assistant principal for a moment.

[16:18]

And let's say we're not in the ideal situation where lots of smart people have thought about how to set me up for success. I'm just in a situation and maybe I'm doing my principal's job and my own job. What might I look for in your book to help me set myself up for success? You know, especially if my principal is a little bit less than helpful. I mean, I just hear from a ton of people who are great assistant principals who are just carrying that extra weight of having a not great principal that they're working with.

[16:45] SPEAKER_02:

I think, first of all, you make a very valid point, and we address that point, too. We talk in the third chapter about calming, cautioning, and counseling, which is some people want to go straight to the principal's chair, and they're not even close to being ready. So we have to kind of walk them back a little bit. Others want to stay as an assistant principal, and that's totally 100% okay. We need career assistant principals. And oftentimes, those career assistant principals do end up shouldering a lot of those burdens because...

[17:11]

the principal misunderstands their utility as, well, you're just principal B. It's A and B rather than principal and assistant principal, and that can be problematic. So within our book, I think what those assistant principals could find if they don't have a great experience in their school is we do lay out specifically, like here are some categories you should be focusing on. We provide examples and templates. We have a kind of leadership development planning template with some examples. from both the assistant principal and the principal perspective, all kind of within our appendix and stuff.

[17:44]

We intended this book to be an interactive book, so it could exist as a self-study. That's not an ideal, obviously. It would be nice to have a collaborative. But if you wanted to self-study, there's lots of opportunities in here for reflection and different perspectives of both principals and assistant principals are kind of woven in throughout.

[18:04] SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, and I would say we spend a good deal of time talking about expert noticings. And so if I'm that assistant principal and I'm noticing, hmm, I seem to be shouldering more than my fair share of the burden of responsibility here, there's always that opportunity to bring it back to the practice standards because the principal and assistant principal are bound typically by the same practice standards. So let's talk about leading the learning community. Let's make sure that we're having a frequent set meeting time to talk about school operations, talk about the learning, talk about what's happening, and to feel comfortable to engage in those conversations with your principal. You know, like I'm noticing that this, and while I appreciate the opportunity to learn and grow in this area, I'm also having these other things to tend to. So when I'm looking at my professional workload, my work-life balance, my responsibilities, can we have a conversation about that equitable distribution of work and assignments?

[18:56]

So we want through Bandura's framework, where we talk about self-efficacy, You know, when you're on the airplane flight, the first thing is to put your own oxygen mask on first, which is so counterintuitive for us as leaders because we want to help others first. So in helping ourselves professionally to say, okay, I think, you know, if I'm putting the oxygen mask on, I have a lot going on here and I need help and support. So don't just assume that because I'm maybe thriving or doing well that I'm good and you just let me go. Let's ground that with frequent conversations, ongoing dialogue, our professional growth plan for the year. And we recommend to Vince's earlier point, only pick one or two of the practice standards to do a deeper dive in versus try to do a little bit of everything. And so I think the dynamic between principal and assistant principals is important.

[19:47]

It's critical. And the staff see that the staff know who's doing more of the lion's share of the work, or, you know, if the teachers are coming to the assistant principal because they're de facto they see that person as the principal then that's the conversation to the principal that's the cautionary tale hey you know like I'm not the principal I want to be a principal perhaps but let's have this conversation and further with expert noticing what can you then do as the assistant principal to tap others aspiring teacher leaders on the shoulder and say hey do you now want to take on an element or help support me in some of these areas within the school community to deepen your praxis and growth as a leader. So we provide a lot of kind of conversations, social persuasion, difficult conversations, how to have those, how to ask good mediative questions.

[20:43]

So when you're having kind of some of those difficult conversations or we prefer the term carefrontation versus confrontation. And just how to professionally have that difficult conversation about workload or the experience I'm having and what can we do to make that better?

[21:01] SPEAKER_01:

So certainly a very valuable resource for an assistant principal who is, as you said, looking to kind of self-study and build their confidence as a leader and prepare for perhaps a principal position elsewhere if opportunities are not making themselves available anymore. in their current position. I wonder if we could close by just talking a little bit about system level use, because certainly these are system level considerations that if they're not being addressed, need to be by principal supervisors, by superintendents in order to have viable leadership pipelines and pathways. What do you hope that system level leaders will do with this book?

[21:36] SPEAKER_02:

So for me, and I'll just offer something very briefly, then I'll turn it over to Tim, who has a little bit more systems level experience. For me, the first thing I would say is start to think outside the box of where you're attracting your leaders from. So not just exclusively that one way track, open your perspectives to alternative pathways into the principalship. That would be my systems level suggestion.

[21:59] SPEAKER_00:

And I would say LeaderReady provides systems leaders with a very dedicated approach to to how to grow great leaders. And looking at the four pathways, it is a harmonized, a systematic approach to ensure that all of your aspiring leaders are learning what's important to your local context of what every assistant principal should know, understand, and be able to do. And I feel that the book really provides that very practical roll up your sleeves. Let's dig into this. Let's look at the case studies. Let's read the examples.

[22:30]

Let's look at the research that's provided and let's apply this. It really gives systems leaders a very good mentor text in terms of how to add to or value add or enrich or support your existing leadership development programming.

[22:45] SPEAKER_01:

Wonderful. So the book is Leader Ready, Four Pathways to Prepare Aspiring School Leaders. Tim Cusack and Vince Bustamante, thank you so much for joining me on Principal Center Radio.

[22:56] SPEAKER_00:

Thanks, Justin. It was a pleasure. Thank you very much.

[22:58] Announcer:

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