leadership in high schools

• Definite turn offs/downers: You look like you hit the bars last night.
• Making longer than necessary eye contact with an interviewer on the panel, insinuating a relationship that does not exist professionally.
• Being too friendly and casual.  Translation:  you do not have the substance for the job and are hiding behind your social self. 
• Calling in saying you will be late.
• Coming in with a bottled drink and drinking it the whole time of the interview while complaining that you are nervous.
• Complaining that the questions are too long.  Translation:  You do not know the answers.
• Coming in with an unbuttoned shirt, no socks and clothes that are too tight and say you are leaving to go to the first bar you find after the interview.
• Saying that you know you should have brought a portfolio, but you did not. 
• Shouting at an interviewer because you asked for clarification, you got it, then get angry. 
• Ask questions at the end of the interview that take longer to answer than the interview itself!
• Ask questions that if you had done your homework,you would not need to ask.
• After you accept the job, call back and say you did not know you were interviewing for that particular job.

The above is all based on my real experiences as a school administrator.

No one can make any of this up!  Do other interviewers have pointers that they can share to assist teachers land a full time job? 

The minutea of running a school is my answer.  Sorting out Personnel issues, easing tensions amongst staff,  physically checking on staff and student attendance, work with community agencies, outreach to parents, follow-up with other principals, returning email and telephone messages, answering questions that are common sense based, that come up throughout the day that do not necessarily require a principal to answer.   All these tasks are very important and cannot be ignored however, there is never enough time to have the sustained professional conversations with teachers that emphasize personal growth. 

The focus of all leaders should be Curriculum, Instruction and Assessment.  This is the crux of our work.  If a principal is deterred from this focus, the school will waver in focus and direction.  Students will suffer and educational outcomes will be haphazard.  I call upon all educators to join in the dialogue aimed at focussing our attention on the jobs that can be problem solved everyday by adults in the school (build capacity for problem solving) who work in various capacities, and provide quality time to school leaders to engage in professional discourse about curriculum, instruction and assessment. 

Virtual world conversations using web 2.0 technology will be the basis of my professional growth and discovery.