Lord, what do I do now? Prepping new principals goes well beyond a set of new keys and well wishes

School Administrator, June, 2005 by Thomas S. Mawhinney

He arrived at his new school on the first day of July and found the building locked. If he was expecting a welcoming committee, he was in for a major disappointment. Once he gained entrance, he had to convince the custodian to let him into the principal's office. There on the desk, he discovered a set of keys and a note from his predecessor. It read simply, "Good luck!" He sat down in the chair, put his feet on the desk and muttered out loud, "Lord, what do I do now?"

His name was Curtis Wells and he was describing his first day as the headmaster of Hyde Park High School. I chuckled to myself as I listened intently to his 1995 presentation at the Harvard Principals Center. I laughed because my induction had been strikingly similar.

I started my first job as principal at the beginning of August. When I arrived at the school, I was the only adult there. Two students were painting my office, but everyone else was on vacation, including the superintendent and my two secretaries. The director of buildings and grounds sought me out the following day and gave me a quick indoctrination, but I learned more from the two teen-aged painters. Thanks to Curtis, I realized that my welcome, or lack of one, was a tradition widely observed at high schools across the country.

In preparation for my principalship, I had been an assistant principal in two high schools--one in Massachusetts and the other a two-hour drive from New York City. Neither of my bosses had the time nor inclination to mentor me. Like many principals in dealing with their assistant principals, they were content that I competently handled discipline and performed an occasional teacher observation. It wasn't until I sat in the back of a classroom observing a teacher for the first time that I realized I did not have a clue what I was doing. I needed help in a big way: I was a mentee in desperate need of a mentor.

I believe my first-year experience in the principalship is the rule rather than the exception. I agree with Warren Bennis, the esteemed management consultant, when he suggests, "The first leadership experience is an agonizing education, in that nothing else in life prepares you."

None of my colleagues who had been appointed to the principalship following a stint as an assistant had a mentoring relationship with their boss. Most had paid their dues by doling out discipline to students or by being a successful sports coach. In many cases, they were chosen by default--their boss retired and they were next in the line of succession. Is it any wonder that school leaders begin their journey without the tools to be effective?

More Than Keys

I read a fascinating story in Principal Leadership about Ben Hix, who as a high school principal had mentored 15 administrators in his own building. Ben's story is unusual because it's rare you hear of a principal mentoring even one individual. In my own 10-year career, I had the pleasure of this kind of relationship twice. Most school districts now insist that teachers have a trained mentor during their beginning years, yet we allow first-time principals to run schools with little more than a set of keys and good wishes.

During my first tour as an assistant principal, I became involved in a leadership training program sponsored by the Massachusetts Department of Education known as the Commonwealth Leadership Academy. The goal was to expose school administrators to corporate-like leadership training and provide long-term follow up.

We were taught by a professional staff developer who used effective teaching methods to help us explore cutting-edge organizational theory. We had a cohort group that continued to meet voluntarily with the consultant for 10 years after the initial five-day workshop. This experience changed my life and set me on a career-long quest to learn what it takes to be an effective principal.

With this training under my belt, I entered my first principalship feeling confident. Yet in looking back, I can admit, "I didn't know what I didn't know." No amount of bookwork prepares one for the job. My superintendent assigned me a mentor, but there was little time for us to process. My mentor was a busy middle school principal who met with me only when I had major problems. I did not feel comfortable calling her. I naively felt it would have been perceived as a sign of weakness. So I struggled in silence, feeling my way in the darkness, learning from my mistakes and many times not knowing I was committing them until it was too late.

Thrills of Mentoring

My opportunity to mentor someone else happened by chance, not by design. As a high school principal, I hired an assistant principal who had spent the first 15 years of his professional life in the corporate world. He had come to me after quitting his first job as a novice educational leader--he was an assistant high school principal in a district more interested in politics than teaching and learning. He was not happy with his initial experience and without prospects of another job he resigned at the end of that first year.