Facing the Challenges: How Principals Can Survive and Thrive in Today’s Schools

Leading a public school today, regardless of its size, configuration, or location is an undertaking of immense responsibilities while confronting many challenges along with the rewards associated with watching children grow and learn. The leadership role rests with the school’s principal. Rarely do they receive much on going professional development or recognition and praise even though their students find learning to be pleasurable and exciting in safe and secure classrooms. The book is intended to serve them as a reliable field manual. It provides them with a clear exposition on how to incorporate and exercise morale and servant leadership to their school community. The recommendations and suggestions provided throughout the book are based on years of experience observing the mix of social, emotional, and intellectual activities immersed in all formal schooling. What is proposed is supported by contemporary leadership and learning theories contributed by the social sciences. Thus, the purpose of this book is to enable principals to navigate safely through the many challenges accompanying today’s educational reforms. It will require principals to exercise courage and tenacity, along with a high degree of collaboration with all those with a stake in the public service they pledge to provide.

Table of Contents:
PREFACE ACKNOLWEDGEMENTS INTRODUCTION CHAPTER 1: Voices From the Field: Superintendents, Principals, and Teachers CHAPTER 2: Surviving: Becoming an Effective and Resilient Leader CHAPTER 3: Collaborating: Role of Central Office CHAPTER 4: Thriving: Critical Tasks and Needed Changes CHAPTER 5: Educating: Building a Social, Emotional, and Academic School Environment APPENDIX A: Principals’ Questionnaire APPENDIX B: Superintendent’s Questionnaire APPENDIX C: Teacher’s Questionnaire APPENDIX D: Principal’s Survey APPENDIX E: Classroom Climate Survey APPENDIX F: High School Schedule 60 Minute Classes APPENDIX G: High School Student Schedule and No Substitute Policy APPENDIX H: Praise Page

About the Author :
John T. Fitzsimons, with fifty years of experience as a pubic educator has served as a teacher, principal, and school superintendent, in Connecticut, New Jersey, and New York. He holds a Ph.D. in Language and Literacy from Fordham University and has recently served on the New York City’s District 3 Community Board of Education as an appointee of the Manhattan Borough President.

Review :
This book focuses on the practical details and day-to-day experiences of American school principals from the perspective of an experienced practitioner. Fitzsimons, who has 50 years of experience as a public educator, does a good job laying bare the challenges faced by a critical leader in the educational landscape. The five chapters emphasize different aspects of the job, from working collaboratively with teachers, staff, and superintendents to thriving as the instructional leader of a school. Each chapter contains thoughtful, practical advice that focuses on best practices and potential minefields that can trip up even experienced school administrators. The book is well written and organized in a clear way that examines each topic in a logical and organized fashion. While it is intended for principals and those that seek to be principals, it would also be a good resource for prospective teachers, school board members, legislators, and even school parents. At only 86 pages this is a quick read, but one that contains a number of valuable resources in its appendixes, including surveys for gathering information about classroom climate and stakeholders' views for the school, as well as innovative school schedule templates. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readership levels. A very practical approach to becoming a successful principal. Dr. Fitzsimons incorporates many of the tools (along with background information) necessary to be well respected as an educational leader. Facing the Challenges is a valuable read, as it evaluates all of a school’s components necessary for a viable teaching and learning environment. John Fitzsimons provides a very useful guide that can, if utilized by school principals, result in their self-improvement while creating a clear sense of just how crucial that position is to successful schools. It can also show superintendents and district-level administrators how they can constructively support and evaluate their principals. Equally, it can serve administrators throughout the district as a means to improve their performance as school leaders. Facing the Challenges: How Principals Can Survive and Thrive in Today’s Schools is an eminently usable book that practitioners can pick up at night and put some of the time-tested principles into practice the very next morning. The content derives from the author’s decades of experience in educational leadership positions and is directed at the principal in today’s environment. I wish I had had this volume when I was a practicing school principal. Facing the Challenges: How Principals Can Survive and Thrive in Today’s Schools is one of most relevant books regarding the challenges and issues principals face today. I was particularly impressed with how best these contemporary issues can be addressed with practical resolutions and suggestions. As a former principal and superintendent, I find this book a must read for principals. The principal’s role is highly complex, stressful and demanding. Dr. Fitzsimons’s book, Facing the Challenges: How Principals Can Survive and Thrive in Today’s Schools, helps new and veteran administrators cut through the noise and focus on the essential elements of leadership so necessary in today’s world. In this book, principals will find tools and suggestions to focus their energy on what is truly important in the role. This is particularly valuable in this era when principals are called upon to do much more than simply educate students. Fitzsimons’s voice of reason and practical experience gives readers tools and strategies they can implement immediately to affect positive change in their schools. Facing the Challenges: How Principals can Survive and Thrive in Today’s Schools is a refreshing look at the basics of school leadership that all new and aspiring school leaders can learn from. In an age of constant reform and political interference in education, this book looks at leadership as a way to create a "true learning culture" outside the influences of our chaotic world. I encourage those interested in school leadership as well as current school leaders to read this book to reflect and refine their own practices. In Facing the Challenges: How Principals Can Survive and Thrive in Today’s Schools, John Fitzsimons harnesses his 50 years of experience as a teacher, assistant principal, assistant superintendent and school superintendent to provide practical strategies and timely insights to those who are serving as principals and those who aspire to those positions. The book is relevant and a pleasure to read.