Page 7 - LeaderShift 2020: Chapter One -Who Really Needs Another Leadership Book!

LeaderShift
Now, whether you’re a school, a district, or a state-level educational leader, we’re sure there are days you can identify with Jane’s feelings. We all know it’s not easy being an educational leader these days. Although many in the world outside of education do not acknowledge it, being an educational leader today is truly a full contact sport. We face some pretty incredible demands on a daily basis. Writer Larry Cuban (2014) recently quoted an administrator who outlined the realities we live with every day: “You’re a teacher, you’re Judge Judy, you’re a mother, you’re a father, you’re a pastor, you’re a therapist, you’re a nurse, you’re a social worker . . . You’re a curriculum planner, you’re a data gatherer, you’re a budget scheduler, you’re a vision spreader” (Cuban, 2014).
We all know what she’s talking about. The daily demands of the job are incredible. Whether you’re at a district or site level, just think about what you deal with on a daily basis: hiring new staff, monitoring existing staff, dealing with broken windows, leaky roofs, and plugged toilets, talking to parents about discipline issues, dealing with budgets, and handling requests for equipment and money. And then there are the meetings—oh, my goodness, all the meetings - staff meetings, meetings with parents, meetings with students, meetings with the police, meetings with other leaders, meetings with the Department of Education, meetings with maintenance staff—and that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
2020
And against this backdrop, we’re being asked to do more with less—much less: less money, fewer staff, less time, less administrative support. As a result, inevitably we end up lurching from one crisis to another, majoring in minutiae as we try to deal with the tyranny of the urgent and immediate. Sometimes it feels like we’re being sucked into a black hole. And do you notice that nothing gets taken off the plate?
So, now we have higher performance expectations. We have high-stakes testing. We have accountability for all: for you, your students, and your staff. There are increased politically driven compliance expectations, not to mention the numerous new mandates of the week, month, or year.
What we’re experiencing in education right now is a classic case of PhD: things being piled on higher and deeper. The challenge is that when you have too many priorities, you have no priorities. As our colleague Glenn Nowosad says, it’s like juggling tennis balls. How many tennis balls can you juggle before you finally start dropping some of them?
“Ph.D. piled on higher and deeper.”
LeaderShift 2020
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