August 2022: School Administrator
Leading Communities Through Tragedy: Staff Wellness
This issue examines healing-centered leadership — how superintendents can balance collective trauma with their duty to lead.
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Additional Articles
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Beyond Trauma-Gazing: Healing Through Hope and Enriched LearningEducators must not lose sight of our primary charge: to create caring learning environments and provide students with the tools, skills, knowledge and rich opportunities that will help them envision and manifest the futures and lives they desire
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Teacher Morale and WellnessThe new lurking crisis on staffing requires diagnosis and action, not one-off appreciation gestures
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Steering Through Disasters and TragedyIn the past two years, these three superintendents have faced devastating natural crises in their school communities on top of a pandemic
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A Tornado Response that Mobilized Collective LeadershipCollaborative leadership and effective communication are key drivers in all of a district’s professional learning, and both were critical in their emergency tornado response.
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Years in the RoleTime spent working as superintendents.
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Extra Pay During the School DayIs it a conflict of interest for a school band director to collect an outside stipend for running a special event during the normal school day?
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Personal Cellphone Use for Work PurposesA few helpful rules to live by to minimize legal wrangling over business and personal uses of your phone.
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A Prime Resource in External RelationsUsing school board members can be an asset in dealing with the community’s stakeholders.
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Why I’m Comfortable Talking About EquityAn assistant superintendent intentionally seeks out diversified experiences in life and literature to expand her personal bubble.
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Climbing the Mountain Is About Believing It’s PossibleThe voice inside your head either can help you find a path forward or put an obstacle in front.
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A Wake-up Call for Sportsmanship in Scholastic SportsSchool leaders have a role in enforcing strong behavioral standards to curb the increasing presence of offensive behavior and inappropriate language at athletic events.
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It’s What We DoThe new AASA president’s first column discusses paving the path for emotional wellness.
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Opening Our Eyes Again to Overseas SchoolingAASA’s executive director reflects on a recent education mission he took with others to Italy.
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Her Systemic Focus Yields Mighty GainsA Florida superintendent became a meaningful presence among students and staff, leading to striking gains over time.
Staff
Editor's Note
Dialed in for Disaster
No one enters the school leadership field ever expecting to deal with natural disaster, much less studies in doctoral classes how you lead an organization effectively through the worst of times. You might anticipate your toughest challenges right now to come from staffing classrooms with talented teachers or addressing the behavioral needs of students coming out of a public health crisis.
Over the last two years, what superintendents Rob Anderson, Karl Bruchhaus and Richard Rye confronted in their school systems in Colorado, Louisiana and Tennessee were raging wildfires, powerful hurricane winds and devastating floods brought on by changing climate conditions. How they steered their school communities through these unforeseen crises, coordinated responses with other public agencies and attempted to preserve instructional time is shared by veteran education writer Bill Graves in his piece “Steering Through Disasters and Tragedy”.
Sharing these superintendents’ efforts to lead organizations through unprecedented circumstances seemed like an appropriate fit in an issue that starts off with attention to healing-centered leadership (page 18). Jennifer Cheatham, a former superintendent now working at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, has been studying this subject and she calls our attention to some role models, notably Baltimore’s superintendent Sonja Santelises.
Related contributions on leadership by current and former superintendents Stephen McCammon, Carrie Hruby and Jill Siler also deserve your attention this month.
Jay P. Goldman
Editor, School Administrator
703-875-0745
jgoldman@aasa.org
@JPGoldman
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