The Empowered Principal

The School Leader's Alternative to Career Burnout

Angela Kelly Robeck

• Publisher: Morgan James Publishing
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781642793895
• Topic: Didattica
• Subtopic: Leadership nella didattica

• Teaches readers how to manage feelings of overwhelm and frustration
• Offers readers a frank assessment of whether to confidently stay in the job despite feelings of burnout or peacefully leave with no regrets
• Presents practical tips for working each day with joy and accomplishment
• Features the Angela Kelly Robeck's proprietary STEAR METHOD to help readers make decisions from an empowered state
• Firsthand advice from a former principal

1

The Struggle Was Real

I bet you thought that being the boss was going to be amazing. I am guessing you believed that you would finally get to make the changes at your site you desperately craved as a classroom teacher. Perhaps you’ve been able to hold conversations about making improvements, yet the ideas never seem to get fully implemented. You had no idea the quantity of demands that are placed on a school leader. You find yourself scurrying from one meeting to the next, talking about the latest best practices with little faith that you’ll ever have time to implement them. You are now coming to work each day wondering why the job even matters and dreaming of a life that involves late mornings, coffee, and yoga pants – anything but emails, evening meetings, and rainy-day recess.

What I’ve come to learn is that most school principals are in the same boat. They too are disillusioned by the reality of the job. There are hundreds, if not thousands of teachers like yourself, who took the leap into school administration thinking they would be able to handle challenges and solve problems with ease. Yet when they get into the daily grind, they find themselves overwhelmed and frustrated just like the last school leader. What is going on? Why does this job seem to chew people up and spit them out? How do some leaders find their way while others are left in a cloud of confusion, complaints, and consternation?

Trust me, your efforts have not gone unnoticed. I know you have tried everything to keep up with your to-do list. You wake up early to get a head start on emails that came in between midnight and 5:00 a.m. and double check your calendar to ensure that you aren’t late for your first meeting of the day. You delegate so much to your secretary that you sometimes wonder if she is in fact the boss of the school instead of you. You visit classrooms and take breaks with the kids at recess to remind yourself of why you wanted this job in the first place. You call your colleagues to check in and see how they’re doing, only to feel like they have it all pulled together while you are swimming in a pool of hot mess.

On one hand, you want to want the job. You want to love being a principal. Everyone else seems to love that you’re in charge. Parents of your students ask you how you manage do it and your own parents have bragging rights that their daughter is the big cheese at school. Your nonteacher friends think that teaching 25 five-year-olds was crazy enough, but dealing with 40 staff members, 500 students, and thousands of parents and community members is the definition of insanity. When you go to parties, people always respond with gratitude for the work you are doing – probably because they know they could never do what you do.

Yet, even with all the accolades, you are not happy. You do not find joy in the work. You really want to, but you just don’t. You dream of loving the job as much as you love the paycheck but, instead, you shove down the feelings of disappointment and depression and kick into robotic mode. What’s left is an outer shell that resembles you filled with an emptiness you cannot put your finger on. You dream of changing careers altogether, then resign to the fact you have no idea what else you’ll do. It’s back to working for the weekend and taking whatever drama comes your way.

How did this happen? How did becoming a school leader turn you into a work zombie who pretends she thrives on the fast pace of leadership but secretly loathes every single workday? You know in your head that you are not this person you’ve become, but you have no idea how to change the way you are feeling and stop this cycle of insanity. If you are like me, I’m guessing you’ve spent endless nights trying to solve the mystery by reading books, listening to podcasts, printing out inspirational quotes, and journaling to find an answer. You believe that if only you could find a way to love your job so that you can hold on to all you’ve worked so hard for, life would be so much better.

Yet, in the meantime, you are working from the time you wake up until you crash at night. You miss out on personal events because you have school events at night and on the weekends. You find yourself staying in principal mode when you get home and barking orders at your husband and kids. While you sip on a gin and tonic, you dream of walking into the district office and resigning tomorrow but the angst of no paycheck brings you back to reality. You look into the mirror and see how you’ve aged over the last couple of years. You observe the wrinkles, weight gain, and a few grey hairs poking out from the part of your hair. You think to yourself “I look like I’m a former president! My job cannot be as stressful as that job!” Yet it feels that stressful. You’re at a complete loss.

Let me offer you some hope. I have been in your shoes and I was at a loss just like you. Being a principal is no simple task. It requires stamina, patience, skill, and contemplation. It takes an incredible amount of effort, and I can relate to dreaming of the day that I would drop the keys off one last time and not let the door hit me in the bum. However, before you run off to Tahiti with nothing with a bathing suit and open a tiki bar, let’s see if we can dive a little more into what your heart is authentically seeking.

Since you are reading this book, I’m under the impression that you feel trapped between wanting to maintain your position in education and wanting to quit this job and find a career in something less stressful. Let me guess. You’d leave if you could but the money is too good, the benefits are nice, and your pension will be killer if you can just stand to work for 20 more years. You’ve worked so hard to earn this title and status, you have strong connections with your colleagues, and you have no idea what else you would do with the rest of your life if you weren’t in education. Even if you did know what else you’d like to do, wouldn’t your colleagues be in shock at your exit? Wouldn’t family and friends tell you that you’re crazy for leaving such a good job? Wouldn’t you regret your decision to resign when your savings account bottomed out?

These fears feel so real. They seem like factual outcomes of your decision to quit the job. They feel so real that every time you contemplate leaving, you talk yourself out of it. In that case, let’s take a look at your life from the angle of staying in the job. You decide that although you aren’t happy and the job is not what you thought it would be, you can’t leave because you need the money and you cannot imagine life without your current circles of connections. You don’t have time to decide what else to do with all of your remaining time on earth, therefore working for another person is the simplest option. Even though the thought of two more decades of being a principal makes you physically ill, you figure you can sugar coat your way through it, repeating positive quotes and mantras to get you through to retirement, where you will finally be able to relax and have some fun.

Feeling even more uncertain about what to do?

Let me ask you this. What would it feel like to make the decision of staying or going from a place of knowing how to love either choice? Does this feel possible? I know. It seems like there is no way you can enjoy a job that kicks the ever-living daylight out of you day after day. Is it possible that after reading this book you could decide that you love the position and stay for years to come? Could you also be at peace with your tenure as principal and choose to try new endeavors?

What I have learned through my years of experience as a school leader along with my years of exposure to thought management and life coaching is this: You have the ability to love it and leave it at any time. You can choose to enjoy your position as a school leader. You can choose to be miserable as a school leader. You can choose to love the position while you are in it and resign to pursue other positions, careers, or interests. Glenda the Good Witch of the North was right. You’ve always had the power. You just have to learn it for yourself and I am going to show you how.

2

My Story

At the beginning of my tenure, I had very little confidence in my competency as a leader. I had no formal training on how to lead a team of 40 adults. I was inexperienced at budgets and meeting facilitation. I knew how to implement my classroom vision but managing a vision for an entire school seemed daunting. I spent a great deal of time passively thinking, planning, and preparing versus actively engaging in activities that were new to me. I can remember how long I would prepare myself for a school site council meeting. I agonized over the agenda items and how to present them. I feared I did not have enough knowledge on the topic so I would read and rehearse what I was going to say, and even then I led the meetings from a place of trepidation.

It took me a few years into the job to realize that the only way to really know how to do the job is to take action and do it! No amount of reading, studying, planning, preparing, thinking, or talking about running a powerful meeting will actually make you a powerful meeting facilitator. The act of leading a meeting is what transforms you into a strong leader. Regardless of the outcome of the meeting, choosing to step into your position as a school leader by actively putting yourself out there is how you gain confidence. This holds true in every aspect of the job.

I’ve been in education my entire life – about half as a student and the other half as an educator. As a student I learned all of the socially acceptable skills that go along with being in school, such as standing in line, taking turns, and raising my hand before I speak (that one was really hard for me). I also learned lessons that were not in the curriculum, things like: tell the truth only when it’s pleasant, good students are the only ones who get praised, and only the teacher makes decisions. I took these lessons to heart and worked to be the best little student I could be. I said the right answers, was sure to please the teacher, and never got sent to the principal’s office. I did not ask questions that would offend or upset others and even when I wanted to speak up as I knew it was survival of the nicest. If you wanted to stay in the game and advance your ranking, you had to do whatever the adult in the room said. This method worked well for me through my formative years and into college. I was a strong, obedient student who followed the rules and got the A. It never occurred to me that my skill set honed as a student would not serve me well as an adult.

Who’s the Boss?

Fast forward to 2010. I’d completed all the requirements necessary and secured my first position as an elementary school principal. I was hired as the principal of a brand-new school within my school district. Being a new principal of a new school was truly the blind leading the blind. While I was honored that my boss believed I was capable of this incredible feat, I was not sure how to be a principal, let alone how to create an entire series of new systems for a new school site. I felt overwhelmed, disillusioned, and deflated. I could not keep up with all I was expected to do. I questioned how I got myself into this situation. I was absolutely miserable, yet years of conditioning led me to believe that I should keep quiet and do the job I was hired to do. I approached the new position in the same way I’d approached being a student. However this time it was not working. I wasn’t getting gold stars from the teacher. I wasn’t being complimented on my penmanship or my extra credit completion. I was being pummeled with complaints, concerns, and criticism.

Nothing prepared me for the barrage of negativity I experienced as a principal. My game plan no longer worked. As a teacher, I led with velvet gloves and had the emotional resiliency of a toddler. I gained positive traction by showing up as a sweet, loving, and gentle kindergarten teacher. When I continued using this approach as a principal, I was faced with scrutiny and disapproval. People didn’t want a soft and sappy leader. They wanted someone who was willing to make strong decisions and stand by those decisions. They were looking for certainty and competency, but most of all courage. I wanted to deliver on their demands and read all the leadership strategy books I could get my hands on. The tips were helpful in how to execute the work, but there were no words of advice on how to manage the emotional sabotage of school leaders. I had little practice in dealing with antagonistic feedback.

Fortunately into my second year, I stumbled across Finding Your Own North Star by Martha Beck. I immediately bought her book and was so intrigued by her work that I subsequently completed her life coach training program. It became so clear to me why I had been struggling. I was approaching my job in a constant state of fear. I was afraid of being disliked by my staff and the parent community. I was worried I was not making the best instructional choices for the students. I believed I was not capable of being decisive and bold. I based my approach to my job on a set of standards I’d set for myself way back in childhood. It had never occurred to me to consider why I placed so much emphasis on being liked and why I was so afraid of other people’s disapproval. I gained insight on why some people sparked apprehension and negativity in me and how I could adjust the way I responded to them. As I strengthened the habit of managing my thoughts, I began to plan my day from a place of abundance instead of scarcity. I started to see that when I chose to believe I was capable of handling any situation that arose during the day, no matter what, that life as a principal became so much more tolerable.

I also recognized that strategies for building school leaders’ emotional fitness and resiliency were non-existent. We participated in trainings that recognized the need for emotional resilience – however, the focus was primarily on student mental and emotional well-being. Conversations involving emotional support for school leaders were swept under the rug. After all, we were already in a leadership position. It was assumed that we were capable of handling our emotions. When principals expressed emotional distress during district leadership team meetings, it was said that as leaders we should be able to problem solve on our own. There was no time built into our workweek for tending to our emotional needs as humans. We were too busy being busy.

Still, something told me that neglecting our emotions as educators was a significant contributor to the industry’s high levels of attrition and low percentages of student achievement. I became a certified life coach through The Life Coach School under Brooke Castillo in 2015 and began sharing a variety of mind management tools with students, teachers, and parents. One was the STEAR cycle, which I will explain in detail later. Parents were so impressed with the STEAR cycle that they scheduled one on one appointments with me to dive deeper into understanding its process and how they might use it with their children at home. Teachers found it helpful when supporting students through social conflicts and gleaned some insight into their own emotional reactions to work and personal situations. I enjoyed being able to support my constituents and see how STEAR helped them supervise their thoughts and emotions.

While I enjoyed interjecting thought management tools into my work whenever possible, I continued to feel misaligned. I hired a personal coach and heavily relied on the STEAR cycle to manage my thoughts about the job, yet I yearned for a lifestyle that was more flexible and free of the school year demands and rigor. My heart ached to spend my days teaching others the power of the STEAR cycle. I just knew that if they could see how their thoughts impact their emotions and results, they too could start shifting to more intentional thoughts that better serve them. On the flip side, I continued to hold firmly to the belief that I relied on this job for steady income, benefits, and professional status. My mind was generating conflicting thoughts all day long.

I allowed my brain to argue with itself until my mom was diagnosed with an incurable medical condition. She was no longer able to travel and eventually became homebound. In order to spend time with her, I had to travel from my home in California to my home state of Iowa. As you can imagine, the school year schedule was not forgiving. I was struggling to meet the needs of my mom and the demands of the district. I shifted to a district level administrator position for one year, thinking that I could juggle both, but I found myself not being able to be with her when she most needed me. I attempted to take a leave of absence, and when that fell through, ...