The Assistant Principal Podcast | All Other Duties as Assigned with Dr. Ryan Donlan

All Other Duties as Assigned with Dr. Ryan Donlan

January 31, 2023 / 52:49/E95

There are a couple of closely related questions am frequently asked: As an AP, what’s my role in helping to support the principal’s vision? How do I lead if my principal and I have different leadership styles? How do I practice instructional and/or visionary leadership if I’m stuck doing butts, buses, and books? This gets at an essential challenge in developing principals. The job of the assistant principalship is very different than the job of the principalship, and it can be hard to prepare to be a principal when you are busy being an assistant principal. These are questions focused on assistant principals, but the answers will be relevant to principals and other school and district leaders, so I hope you will stay with us as we unpack what to means to be number 2 (#Today I’m joined by Dr. Ryan Donlan, a Professor of Educational Leadership at Indiana State University, a former p-12 school leader, and author of All Other Duties as Assigned: the Assistant Principal’s Critical Role in Supporting Schools Inside and Out.

Show Notes, Episode 95: All Other Duties as Assigned with Dr. Ryan Donlan

About this show:

There are a couple of closely related questions I am frequently asked:As an AP, what’s my role in helping to support the principal’s vision?How do I lead if my principal and I have different leadership styles?How do I practice instructional and/or visionary leadership if I’m stuck doing butts, buses, and books?This gets at an essential challenge in developing principals. The job of the assistant principalship is very different from the job of the principalship, and it can be hard to prepare to be a principal when you are busy being an assistant principal.
These are questions focused on assistant principals, but the answers will be relevant to principals and other school and district leaders, so I hope you will stay with us as we unpack what to means to be number 2 (#2).

Notable Quotes

Ryan

I got an opportunity very early on in my career to become an assistant principal. It came with another position: the Alternative Education Director. So you can imagine it came with championing kids. What I found out very quickly, Frederick, is that it also came with championing adults.

I'm celebrating a daily opportunity to be only as good as my next day's best work.

Whether it's an informal visit, quick walkthrough or formalized evaluation, it seems the scripting, logging and scribing with tablet or clipboard in hand is more the rule than the exception. I suggest something completely different that may be even more important - a visit just because.

How number twos in leadership have influence and roles in all directions continuously teaching up, teaching down and teaching around.

Frederick

I think that's one of the challenges when we say we're going to go into classrooms and do an observation, like, what does that mean? What are we supposed to do? And then what are the teachers actually expecting from us?...And so I call this performative observation where it's like I'm an audience member. And I'm going into your classroom and you're giving a performance. So the benefit is for me, I'm just there to enjoy and to appreciate your performance. So it's you're not going to get any feedback from me because I'm there for me for my own growth and for my own benefit.

But if I'm being authentic and I work at my authenticity and I work to prioritize the things that are in line with what I value, and to behave in the ways that reflect my own values when I can be authentic and I am just being. Then I think I'm naturally going to be having more of an impact, right, because I'm going to be true and people are going to recognize that there is that kind of sincerity or that authenticity to me.

If I'm willing to share with you what I'm working on and ask for some accountability, then that means that we're building that culture where that's your expectation and you can do that too. So I think as school leaders, we need to be really transparent about what we're trying to grow at, what we're trying to get better at and consistently share that with our teachers and ask for their support and ask for their help, which then makes it, I think, a lot more appealing when we're pushing into classrooms and we're asking them to grow or we're asking them how they want to grow right now there's an equity in that situation that I think is really positive.

Ryan Donlan Links:

Email: dr@ryandonlan.com

Website: www.ryandonlan.com

Twitter: www.twitter.com/ryandonlan, or @RyanDonlan

All Other Duties As Assigned, Quick Reads (Blog)

https://allotherdutiesasassigned.blogspot.com

Minds Unleashed Book Website

https://www.mindsunleashed.net

Solution Tree Website: All Other Duties As Assigned

https://www.solutiontree.com/all-other-duties-as-assigned.html

Amazon Author Page for All My Books: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Ryan-Donlan/

Frederick Buskey Links: