The Principal Story Learning Guide
To advance the professional learning of aspiring and current school leaders
Purpose: Unit 3 provides participants with an opportunity to identify principal
behaviors essential to building leadership capacity in others. Follow these links to
move through the sections of this unit.
Approximate Time: 4.5 – 5.5 hours.
Facilitators: Adult learning professionals may use this web-based learning tool in principal preparation courses or in workplace study sessions. Facilitators may encourage participants to take advantage of the writable PDFs to record and save their responses. For onsite study groups or classes, the facilitator may choose to print relevant worksheets and provide them to participants. Depending on class structure and learning goals, facilitators will use these tools to provide group and individual learning experiences within the following structure:
Consider ideas and connect with others
Think about the role of a school principal in cultivating leadership in others. Independently,
respond to questions
on the worksheet and exchange responses with a partner.
Connect with others, if applicable, to discuss common themes.
- What does it mean for principals to cultivate leadership in others?
- What examples or results of cultivating leadership can you share from your
own experience?
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Watch the film clip
View a clip on cultivating leadership in others to see research in practice. Use the
Big
ideas chart to guide independent note-taking while viewing.
In this clip, viewers observe Principal Kerry Purcell (Harvard Park Elementary) participating
in an end-of-year team meeting as she develops capacity for learning and leading.
While modeling her thought process, expectations, and beliefs for her teachers,
she also holds learning as a top priority for teachers and students. [
Time: 3 minutes,
5 seconds]
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Read the excerpt
Excerpt from: The School Principal as Leader: Guiding Schools to Better Teaching and
Learning (The Wallace Foundation, 2013), 9-10.
A broad and longstanding consensus in leadership theory holds that leaders in all
walks of life and all kinds of organizations, public and private, need to depend on
others to accomplish the group’s purpose and need to encourage the development of
leadership across the organization. Schools are no different. Principals who get high
marks from teachers for creating a strong climate for instruction in their schools also
receive higher marks than other principals for spurring leadership in the faculty, according
to the research from the University of Minnesota and University of Toronto. Read more...
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Complete the activities
Working in small groups or at their own pace, learners observe, discuss, engage, and
reflect on the ideas and information presented in the film clips and related materials.
Follow these links to tools that include writable PDF files to support this work.
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