Fueling the AP/Principal Relationship

This recent Kappan article speaks to the value of nourishing the AP/principal relationship and offers practices across three key domains to help you show up your best selves and have the collective impact you envision.

1. Intellectual work: professional dialogue. Scheduling and protecting time for the administrative team to engage in professional dialogue facilitates shared leadership and a sense of “intellectual camaraderie.” The team creates an ongoing list of topics and schedules time to access research, share excerpts from readings, review data, and debate the topics of relevance. As an assistant principal and author of the article, Sonja Geddy notes, “This strategy models to our staff that we value exploring the tensions of today’s educational problems and want to actively discuss current challenges in teaching and learning. As the lead learners in our building who know and study relevant research and best practice, we are able to encourage teachers to be reflective practitioners as well.”
2. Communicative collaboration: conversation partnerships. The conversation partnership refers to a practice of checking each other’s thinking. Members of the administrative team access each other to process a leadership challenge or situation. These informal conversations can include rehearsing an upcoming discussion, working through feelings about the issue, organizing thinking, or determining a decision. This builds trust and models for staff that working together leads to success.
3. Inspiration: awe walks. Awe walks “encourage us to seek awe while in motion.” “Carving time to literally walk the spaces of our school once a quarter with a lens of inspiration and gratitude connects us to our people, our place, and our purpose. It reinforces our pride in our work and helps us reimagine ourselves in a refreshed light.” Research in neuroscience supports the benefits of “awe walks” in providing fresh perspective, developing gratitude, and feeling inspired. Staff take their cue from their leaders; when leaders feel inspired and grateful, they emit that energy and it’s contagious!

APs and principals engaging in meaningful work shapes the school's culture and climate.

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