Top Ten Suggestions to Avoid Principal Burnout

I’ve read a number of articles recently about principals resigning from their position mid-year, mostly due to burnout and anxiety.  As I type this, Carney-Sandoe, a national search firm for private and Catholic schools, has well over 130 administrative job listings, most I've ever seen. Indeed, the last couple of years, exacerbated by the stress over Covid protocols and our increasingly polarized society, have been the most difficult in my 34 years as a leader in our schools.

What, then, can we do to make our jobs less stressful,  and less “crushing” in our many tasks and duties? Here’s my top ten list.

10. Tackle the paperwork once/week with a standing appointment off campus.

Put all the paperwork we must do in a stack on our desk. Once a week, during a standing appointment time, take that stack, leave campus, and knock it out. I used to go to the public library a few miles from school and cloister myself in the "stacks." Tell our secretary to tell others we have an “off campus appointment” if someone asks. She can contact us for an emergency. Paperwork comes at us constantly, and it nags at our psyche, sitting there, staring back at us!  It's enormously satisfying to “catch up” once/week, and it gives me peace to put incoming paperwork aside until my next  "appointment."

9. Develop first and second level responders. 

First level is the teacher or a team of teachers. Second level, if a school can afford it, is an assistant principal or someone similar. The third level is the principal.  As a general rule, consistent with the long held Catholic social teaching principle of subsidiarity, things are best handled at the most local level possible, meaning as principals we should develop procedures that direct issues to the teacher or a team of teachers as the first step in handling things, then the assistant principal, then us. 

But it isn’t quite that easy, because parents are also more stressed, meaning they are inclined to meet more often with our teachers, upset about something, and our teachers are weary from the many contentious meetings. This is why I think it’s important to emphasize a team of teachers. 

Here’s what that could mean: Instead of thinking about a “kindergarten teacher, a “first grade teacher”, or a “second grade teacher,” think instead of a K-2, 3-5, or 6-8, or 9-12 teacher “units” of  three teachers per unit. (Larger schools could create multiple 3 person unit teams). That unit could agree on a common one hour meeting time each week if a parent wanted to address a concern at any one of those levels, and the three teachers would meet together with that parent at that designated time for 15 minutes—no more than four of these meetings per week, but all within that hour. If there were more meetings necessary, it would need to be pushed to the following week. I believe from the viewpoint of our teachers, this would be a greatly preferred “structure” that allowed them to mutually support each other and “protect” their time, and I believe from the viewpoint of parents, it would seem like a fuller “hearing,” which has a better chance of not being shuttled up to the next level. 

The other advantage is there would likely be one teacher among the three teachers who is more experienced and could be designated a “lead teacher,” perhaps with a small stipend to recognize him or her as such, who could help the meeting become more productive and helpful than it otherwise might. 

I once heard a successful C.E.O. of a Fortune 500 company say that he tries to "focus on the things that only he can do," and then he tries to delegate the rest. The more substructures,  the healthier our schools and the healthier we are as their leaders! 

8. Create as many recurring processes as possible

...with others as the "trigger" to make something happen. The principal takes on the role where-ever possible as the musical “conductor,” but someone else is playing the instrument! 

Here’s what I mean:  When I was a young principal, every time we had a special schedule, our office had to ring the bells for changing classes manually.  Inevitably, either I or my secretary would become engaged with a student and didn't ring the bell on time, which greatly upset a math teacher on staff. He’d walk across the hall into the office, flustered, pointing at his watch. After three years of this, I finally asked him if he’d like to ring the bells for special days.  He was delighted to do so,  and I never had a problem with him thereafter. One less thing! 

Who opens and locks up the school? Is that our job? Is there a faculty member who likes getting to school early and will open up each day for us? Is there a coach who finishes out practice at 5 p.m. and will lock up? 

Is there a person we can designate as the one to call if a teacher is sick, absent or late to work?  If we can give that person a stipend that acknowledges his or her role, it’s money well spent! Nothing worse for  us than to get a call that a teacher is absent at 6 a.m. ! Is there an administrative assistant role that is not time sensitive, like a service coordinator, or a registrar, who can be paid to also be the “first sub” for teachers who are suddenly absent? 

If we as principals are the “trigger” that fires every gun, we have no time to attend to the unscheduled things—a student in despair,  a disciplinary situation, a parent in need of our attention—that are sure to occur in our schools. It’s in being responsive in these situations, where we can be true ministers to someone, that we derive satisfaction. Otherwise, we run around with our hair on fire, which wears us down. 

7. Get everyone in the habit of sending you emails

...instead of phone calls or asking you to do things during “drive-by’s.” First, an email can be responded to according to our schedule, not that of the caller or a person who "pops in" for a meeting. Second, we’ve got a written reminder of what someone has asked us to do. Third, we have a historical record if we forget something, or forget what we said we would do in response. I hate phone calls, and avoid them whenever I can. I also ask the school secretary to try and schedule a meeting with a person who "pops in," but leave it to her discretion if the parent seems to truly NEED to meet with me at that moment. 

I don’t mean emails should be used to resolve problems. Face to face works best for that. But if I can get parents to preview their concerns in an initial email, it gives me time to prepare for our meeting.  In those meetings we try and develop an action plan—what the school will do, what the parents will do, and what the student will do. It’s best if everyone has skin in the game! I usually follow these meetings up with an email that summarizes what we agreed upon and who’s doing what, so there is no misunderstanding, and I have a written record I can refer back to if issues persist and need to remind myself what we did earlier.

6. Leave campus once/day.

Go home, or go to lunch with someone, or go for a walk. But go!

People don’t fully understand how taxing it is to be ultimately responsible for everything that happens in a school during the school day. If we eat in the faculty room with faculty, we are still very much “on duty.”  If we eat in our office, we’re likely reading emails. Getting away for just an hour is huge for our inner sense of peace. Most of us work from 7’ish until 5, which is a ten hour day, not counting night time engagements! Taking back one hour each day is OK! 

5. Schedule all needed meetings early in the week. Leave Thursday and Friday as free as possible.

I meet once/week with the administrative team for 30 minutes, with each administrator individually for 30 minutes, and with our new teachers once/week for 15-20 minutes. Every two weeks I meet with our campus minister and faculty leadership team. All of these meetings occur on Monday or Tuesday, and if parents need to meet, I generally try and do these meetings on Monday or Tuesday also, unless we can’t work out a time, in which case my fall-back day is Wednesday.  This gives me freedom on Thursday and Friday, days I look forward to for longer term projects, or off campus visits with donors, or thinking through new structures or new ways to do things.  

4. "Re-baptize” or re-purpose existing events for dual purposes 

...Instead of adding new events to the calendar. Rather than a banquet to honor volunteers, for example,  use half times at football games or basketball games to honor them with a few words and a plaque, inviting others to share their appreciation. Instead of inventing new “celebrations” for Catholic schools week, use existing school events, like the weekly school mass, to invite people to celebrate with you, perhaps with some cookies in the gym after, or a few words at the end of mass to celebrate the event. Instead of large "open houses" for high schools,  use the Saturday morning entrance test to give parents tours of the school while they wait for their kids to finish. A good rule of thumb for us: every NEW event added to our calendars must have an existing event taken OFF our calendar! 

3. Get a “‘google voice” telephone number

....so that when you call people back on your cell phone, they won’t have your actual number. A few years back, I called a mother back on my cell phone, and within a week, she was calling me at 6 a.m. to ask me questions about her son. No joke.  And too often, we get phone calls later in the evening that begin “Sorry to bother you, but…” 

Too much access is a curse. Be careful with your phone number! Google will let you create a new telephone number which you can use on your cell phone to dial out instead of your real number. If someone calls you on that number, you can allow it to go directly to voice mail, and google will transcribe the message and send you a text of it.  You can decide if it needs to be responded to at that moment. 

2. Use Fridays for the bad news.

Often, we have to respond to angry parents when they haven’t had a chance to process what's happened, get a hold of themselves and regain their sense of balance. Meetings too close to the event are  full of stress on both principal and parent alike. That’s why I insist that cheerleading try-out results, for example, are posted on Friday afternoon, after school is closed for the weekend. By Monday, the angry mother of the cheerleader who didn’t make it is usually in a better place!  All team cuts, in fact, are posted on Fridays. If I am telling a faculty something I know will upset him or her—a reprimand or a non-renewal, for example—I will schedule the meeting for Friday afternoon, so that he or she is composed for teaching by Monday morning. 

1. Take care of yourself! 

Most of us are oriented to serving others, but not ourselves. We don’t sleep enough, don’t exercise enough, carry around a lot of stress, and gain weight over time. That’s not the formula for a long career! Though as a younger man I was embarrassed to do so, I walk now, every morning, from 6 a.m. to 7 a.m., three miles each day. I am more energetic and less stressed. During that walk, I pray, which centers me and gives me some peace. “Lord, your will be done today” is my consistent theme, and that allows me to let go of some of the worries I carry. I’m still a little too heavy, but I am much healthier! 

Grades!

A frequent stressor for new high school students—especially for kids who come into a college preparatory school with a record of success in middle school— is grades. Though each child is different and has a unique story, the stress often manifests this way: The child begins receiving grades which are significantly lower than middle school. In response, the student works harder than ever, foregoing things that gave him or her joy (sports, dancing, horses, music lessons, whatever)  “because he or she doesn’t have time” to do those things. But even then, grades don’t improve much. The child is miserable. Parents are understandably worried. Often they are upset with the teacher for “unreasonable standards. “

I believe there are a few points of perspective for us to bring into these discussions:

First, a big picture view is important. Middle school grades are generally higher than high school nationally (though both  are inflated.) In our school, on the basis of the transcripts we receive, I estimate the average G.P.A. of an incoming eighth grader is somewhere between 3.5 and a 3.7—in other words, an “A.” The average grade at our high school is between a 3.2. and a 3.4, or a  "B/B+.”  So, there’s likely going to be lesser grades in high school. It’s normal.

Elementary grades are usually  heavily weighted on effort and less on a performance standard. Most often, if children work hard, they earn an “A.” There’s some of that in high schools, too, but because of A.P. scores, A.C.T. results and college admissions standards, high school teachers must measure their results against outside criteria that puts a check to what they represent to colleges as their “A” students. 

Especially for really hard working students who have have made mostly A’s through great effort, it is truly jarring to get B’s and C’s for the first time! Their instinctive response? To apply the formula that’s worked in the past: to double down on their effort. They “carve out” more time in their day, foregoing the things they love doing.  They work later into the night at the expense of sleep, which makes them groggy in class the next day, diminishing their understanding of the material. It’s a declining spiral. 

But if the grade is defined more by a performance standard than effort, effort alone, even Herculean effort, will not yield the results the child is working so hard to obtain. That’s where the stress and unhappiness comes in. That’s frequently when parents ask to meet with us at the school.  

This stress is exacerbated by a culture that idolizes success, defined as “getting the trophy,” or “earning the A.” A mere “B,” or the “silver medal” as Jerry Seinfeld once quipped about Olympic athletes, is given to the “first loser.” “Of all the other losers,” Seinfeld says, “the silver medalist is best.” "No one," he adds, "loses better than you." In high schools, with students who are used to A’s, getting a “B” is sometimes the emotional equivalent of failing. 

So how should a high school and families approach these issues? 

I believe, to begin, high schools must re-define success for students and families, and do their best to help parents re-define success with them. Success can no longer be measured purely by getting A’s. It must be defined as “best effort,” not “optimum results.“  If a child is attending school faithfully, doing his or her homework, and seeking out help from teachers where he or she struggles, that child is doing all he or she can do.  He or she should be praised for that, regardless of grades! For a kid who struggles in high school but demonstrates outstanding effort, I recommend parents take their child out to dinner as an “atta boy” the day BEFORE grades come out,  to communicate that’s what matters most to them. Maybe the grades aren’t exemplary,  but that is secondary to the child’s effort. Bravo to that child! 

Second, I believe it’s important to reclaim the “B” as a “good” grade within the culture of our schools.  It either represents “above average effort” or “above average performance.” Whereas students may not be able to “work their way to an A,” I believe they should be able to do so for a B.  Taking away grades such as P.E. and other “non-academic” classes, I believe the B should be the most common grade given in class college preparatory high schools.  But in most high schools, A’s are twice as common. 

Third, we must define an “A” as optimum performance, not optimum effort. Not everyone is capable of making A’s anymore than everyone is capable of shooting a graceful, left handed layup, rising off the floor on the inside foot and shooting with the left hand. Some people simply don’t have the athletic ability. They can get better at it with a lot of practice, but will never do it as gracefully and reliably as a gifted athlete. In some classes, an “A” may be outside the reach of a student, even one that works hard. 

Here’s a helpful question to ponder as teachers that will begin to sort out the A/B imbalance: “What can an A student do in our classes that a B student cannot do—without using numbers to describe the difference? “ Most of us cannot really answer that very well, because we don’t tie our “A” performance to a particular level of thinking so much as to a percentage right or wrong. But if we did—if, for example A questions were aimed at truly higher levels of thinking (In Bloom’s taxonomy: application level, analysis level, synthesis, etc) we would have many more B’s.  

Fourth, schools must respond to the concern “this hurts my child’s chances for college admissions or a scholarship.”  Many parents are convinced that every “B” their child makes diminishes their child’s chance of acceptance and scholarships, whereas colleges don’t see it that way. Colleges can’t trust high school grades very much, because they are so inflated and vary wildly between institutions. Instead, they focus on difficulty of classes taken, test scores, references and resumes. This isn’t to say that grades are UNIMPORTANT. If we’re comparing a student with a 2.9 vs. a 3.9, the colleges are going to favor the 3.9. But there’s very little difference to a college between students with a 4.0, 3.9 or 3.8 if they’re taking rigorous courses. Honors and A.P. classes are more important to colleges than all A’s. 

Most importantly, we must be gentle, kind and understanding of what our students are going through. Their world is being rocked a bit and their confidence is waning. They need our support and affirmation. We need to remind them that their effort is the most important thing, and assure them that the grades will take care of themselves.  We must find ways to reward and compliment effort. We must be good communicators with parents, and take the opportunity to give frequent praise to the parents about their child. They are feeling vulnerable also!