Four Universal Challenges of School Leadership
Arriving in the U.S. after a trip to Taipei to facilitate a board retreat, I am thinking that four leadership challenges keep bubbling up no matter where the school happens to be in the world. In the U.S., Europe, Central America, the Middle East, and East Asia, independent and international school heads and other administrators report frustration at the same quadruplet of things:
1. A struggle to find, attract and then retain the best teachers. As one head in Palestine said, "they can make lots more money as a driver for one of the NGO's." Substitute public school teacher, sales clerk, writer, police officer, etc., and the quote becomes the same everywhere. Is there anyplace out there where teachers can't make more doing something else? Haven't found it yet.
2. Too few resources and too much need, whether the resource in question is money, time or people. Nonprofit budgets are perpetually strained, the vast majority of schools we work with are under-capitalized, there is never enough time in the day, and one can always use more staff.
3. Parents are demanding at an unprecedented level of stridency. I have a hunch that this, too, has always been true, except that with mobiles, e-mail, text, and even video chat, the intrusion of demanding parents now has taken on a new edge. And one of their demands is for access, often immediate and on their terms, putting even more pressure on the resource of time.
4. Communication failures abound, whether between school and home, administration and faculty, or board and community. Despite decades of trying and more ways of getting a message out to constituents than ever before, this challenge just won't go away. It is invariably one of the first things parents bring up when we do focus groups at schools.
A version of the same things would likely be universals in higher education, too. Maybe in public schools as well, but we wouldn't know since Triangle doesn't work in that sector.
There are no new answers to offer, just encouragement from the fact that we are all in the same boat.