Day 131 (of 2024/25) new head coaches and superintendents…
Pete Carroll has a number of lessons that he has shared over the decades he has been coaching young men.
A favourite on my wall (now mis-filed during a move) was:
Tell me and I’ll know
Show me and I’ll see
Coach me and I’ll do
And now that he is going to work on the Las Vegas Raiders latest rebuild, three key rules of his have been floated …
How does this connect? Well, I can see that there are similarities to coaching hires, moves and school district leadership. Easy to put together some metaphors and parallels. And a lot of people who feel they could do a better job…
And as I remind others… no matter what your job is in education… you have someone else’s ’ideal job’. I can recall my university days when a co-teaching-candidate had an idea of which classroom they intended to ‘get’ when a particular teacher retired… and she would be happy to TOC (Teach On Call) until the opportunity was theirs! And there are many that know they would do a better job as VP, Principal, Director, Superintendent etc… if only they were asked to apply <— the whole application process in education continues to be clouded in mist and shadows because people don’t want others to know that they may be looking until they’ve secured another gig.
Similar in coaching, where a college joke is that you know a coach is on the move when they commit themselves to ‘this job for the rest of my life’ (or something similar). We know coaches are essentially on countdown clocks for their firing/quitting – and we would like to think different of education leadership but movement happens – I recall being on a hiring team early in my career and we were debating two candidates – one we knew was looking at our position for a way into the province and no doubt moving on in 2-3 years and another who we were only slightly less certain of the same ‘leapfrogging’… School had two years before they moved to a bigger district…
It’s a reason I also repeat a saying of a mentor: as principal, I am the least reliable person in the building. Partly because we may make an appointment and then be redirected by a more urgent matter… but also because most districts have a movement cycle (faster for VPs) of a couple of years – mostly based on Hargreaves 3/5/7 idea to maintain effective growth ~ you may remain good if you stay in the same ‘place’ (I’m open to a discussion about mindset/grade vs location) but you always get better with a ‘move’ ~ 3 years in a place of turbulence and significant change; 5 years after some good movements; 7 years when things have been calm and predictable
That begin said, I am in a district that has experienced stable leadership for nearly two decades… but we have a new superintendent starting soon! Looking forward to how our system reacts to new leadership at the top! New named person has a good reputation from those in the PVP community! Welcome Paul McKenzie https://www.sd47.bc.ca/jt/_ci/p/7660 a fortnight-ish to go!
Technolandy 
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