I’m a New Principal, Here’s My Entry Plan…

On January 15 I began my first job as a principal, as the Elementary Principal of T. Baldwin Demarest Elementary School (TBD) in the Old Tappan School District. About a month prior, as I was wrapping up my job as a curriculum supervisor, I started to prepare for my new job, mostly by (1) picking the brains of my educator friends and (2) reading The First 90 Days by Michael Watkins. The best of these thoughts and ideas made their way into an entry plan, which I started to execute soon after I became a principal.

In reading The First 90 Days, one of the quotes that stuck out to me the most was, “For leaders joining new organizations…it helps to think of yourself as an anthropologist sent to study a newly discovered civilization.” And it is this quote that sums up the overarching goal of the entry plan. Two more specific goals:

• Establish relationships
• Learn about the school’s history, where we are now, and where our stakeholders think we should go

That being said, here’s the majority of my entry plan.

———

One-On-One Voluntary Interviews with Teachers and Staff

• 40 minutes set aside for each meeting. Participants signed up via a Google sheets grid (dates at the top, time slots on the left), and all of the meetings lasted about three weeks.
• Teachers and staff were told that common themes (while preserving confidentiality) will be communicated and possibly discussed with teachers, staff, and Superintendent. (This has yet to take place.)

Questions (sent out ahead of time):

• Tell me about yourself!
• What are you most proud of at TBD Elementary?
• If you were the principal, what would your priorities be?
• What questions do you have?

Meetings to Learn About Core Subject Areas

From a curriculum standpoint, I had two meetings to learn more about where we are with our main subject areas. I met with our Literacy Specialist to discuss Language Arts, and I met with one of our classroom teachers to discuss math.

Questions (sent out ahead of time):

• Where were we?
• Where are we?
• Where are we going?
• What data (qualitative and quantitative) do we collect/use?

Student Meeting(s)

• Two students from each fourth grade classroom (preferably, who have been at TBD Elementary since Kindergarten). Teachers chose students. I met with all of the students at once, in my office during their lunch period. The student’s answers will be communicated and possibly discussed with teachers, staff, and Superintendent. (This has yet to take place.)
• This was as a one-time meeting, but may turn into an advisory group.

Questions (sent out ahead of time):

• Tell me about yourself and your experiences at TBD Elementary!
• What is the best thing about being a student at TBD Elementary?
• What is something that you wish you could change at TBD Elementary?
• What questions do you have?

Parent Meetings

I had two meetings with parents on the same day, one at 9 am and the other at 7 pm. (This way, parents could pick the time that best fit their schedule.) Just like with students, this started out as a one-time meeting but may result in more meetings.

Questions (sent out ahead of time):

• Tell me about yourself and your experiences at TBD Elementary!
• What is the best thing about being a parent at TBD Elementary?
• What is something that you wish you could change at TBD Elementary?
• How would you describe family engagement at TBD Elementary?
• What questions do you have?

Questions for Superintendent

• What are your goals, and how can I align mine with them?
• What low hanging fruit should be tackled?
• Are there other stakeholders with whom I should communicate? And, how?

Digital Communication

Weekly Updates

• For teachers and staff, a weekly blog post will be pushed out every Friday.
• For parents, a weekly blog post will be pushed out every Friday.

Social Media

Using @TBD_Elementary on Instagram and Twitter, and the District’s Facebook page, photographs/captions will be pushed out through Instagram. And by using IFTTT, all photographs/captions will also be automatically embedded on Twitter and Facebook.

———

Next Steps

Our next steps can be summed up by a Facebook post of mine from a few weeks ago, when students and teachers were on vacation:

No students today. Spending most of the day reviewing/organizing notes from my entry interviews with teachers and students. Three thoughts: to promote transparency (while preserving confidentiality) some of the results should be shared with everyone on staff; the results mean next to nothing if they’re not used to help guide where we go from here; to keep the pulse of the building, these interviews should be done on a yearly basis.

In the End

Three more quick thoughts to wrap things up:

• Now that I’ve met with everyone, I couldn’t imagine entering into an organization without an entry plan such as this one.
• The entry plan has helped me to comprehend “where we are,” after only about six weeks on the job. However, I should keep in mind that there is still so much to learn about my school and district. In other words, I need to continue to ask questions and listen.
• Regardless of the fact that the entry plan was for my job, I truly enjoyed taking to the time to get to know everyone!

In the end, I look forward to our students ultimately benefiting from this work.

Connect with Ross on Twitter.

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Ross Cooper

I'm an administrator in New York and the coauthor of two books on project based learning.

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