Instructional Leader = Questioner not Expert

I hate the term administrator, as it applies to schools, because in my mind it connotes “manager”.  As a principal, I understood managing the building was a part of my job, but I didn’t feel that the term administrator expressed the most important part of a principal’s job which is one of instructional leadership.  However, instructional leadership does not mean “expert” as well because the teachers of any particular grade level K-12 should be the true experts on the staff.  They are the ones that have specific training in a particular topic and who have first hand knowledge of what works and what doesn’t in the classroom.   The role of the instructional leader should instead be one of nurturing a common vision and overall support of that vision across the curriculum by having a deep enough understanding of the curriculum to ask the right questions to the right experts.  Hence, they are a leader of instruction in each of these areas because they understand and communicate the direction the school should be moving, but not necessarily the details of how that will look on a daily basis in the classroom.

As you might guess, in order to be an effective  instructional leader, you have to have a vision to constantly refer to which basically acts as a compass for all decisions or actions.  I would encourage all instructional leaders to adopt a greenhouse philosophy for schools.  Schools run as a greenhouse focus on nurturing students as learners, rather than test takers, by focusing on the skills that will allow them to be successful (the “roots” in this example) beyond the classroom (i.e. beyond test scores).   Instructional Leaders that look at schools as a greenhouse communicate a vision or message of the importance of “nurturing the students’ roots” and as a result, should communicate that simple message as often as possible to all stakeholders (students, parents, staff, and community members).    However, it is more than just communicating the vision, but rather asking the questions in relation to the vision that is the key.

Instructional leaders should be asking themselves how does any particular decision or action they support impact: student learning, teacher growth, or school improvement as it pertains to running a school as a greenhouse (the vision).   I mentioned that instructional leaders will not be, nor should be, the experts in the room.  The expectations should be for the teachers to be the experts based on their educational background, classroom experience, and professional drive.  However, that does not mean that questions are not asked of the experts As an example,

• If a group of teachers are looking for the school to purchase a computer program to help students better understand a topic (student learning) the instructional leader or better yet the other teachers need to ask the question(s) that basically lead back to “How does this nurture our students’ roots?” (the vision).  
• If a proposal from a PLC team to attend a professional development workshop (teacher growth) comes across the instructional leader’s desk than the question “How does this nurture our students’ roots?” (the vision) must be asked.
• If a team of teachers has done research and is looking to change the schedule of the building to lead to a better school environment (school improvement) it begs the question, “If we do that, how does this nurture our students’ roots?”.  

The point being that whatever the “vision” of the school is, it must be revisited on a daily and sometimes hourly basis by everyone within the school.  So the main purpose of the instructional leader is not to be the expert, but rather remind the experts and support them on working toward that vision.  Now, to be clear, the actual question should not always be “How does this nurture our students’ roots?”, but that should be the underlying meaning.  The actual questions could sound more like:

• “How will using a computer program help our students to become more fluent in their math as compared to using manipulatives in class?” or
• “What are the goals of this professional development that you hope to bring back to the classroom to improve student learning?” or
• “If the schedule were to change, how will this positively and negatively impact the student’s ability to grow as learners?”  

This line of questioning, with a focus on student learning by the instructional leader, should be the non-negotiable expectations for everyone in the school if we expect our students to “leave school ready to positively contribute to the environment”.

In his book titled “Creating Innovators”, Tony Wagner (@DrTonyWagner) emphasizes the importance of educators having a sense of urgency to develop innovators (i.e.nurture students roots) over that of a sense of complacency of maintaining the status quo. Instructional leaders can help to support teachers to have that sense of urgency, no matter what the subject area, by keeping the vision of the school in mind with each decision both in and out of the classroom.   In my mind, the vision is the non-negotiable piece of all this for the instructional leader to relay as the expectations.  Clearly, instructional leaders have to have enough understanding to ask the right questions to the experts/teachers in the moment as it relates to the vision, but in the end they should not be THE experts.