by Lina Martinez
One of the hardest jobs is to run a school, and running one as efficiently as possible is going to have a powerful impact on your students as well as your team. Effective school leadership is second to teaching when it comes to the success of the students, and a good leadership team is important for creating the smoothest possible educational community.
For your school to be as efficient as possible, you need to be able to do as much research on what makes teachers motivated to teach as much as it makes children want to learn. You can find more details about making your school efficient in their technology, but you can also think beyond that. Here are four ways that you can make your school more efficient, and improve the way you all work together.
List Your Priorities. You should start with time management. In a school, you will be dealing with teachers, team leaders and children all at once, and making the shift from a teaching schedule to a leadership position is not an easy one. In your new role, you need to think about what your priorities are and how you can put them first. Create lists of goals you want to reach and think about how much time you are spending on admin versus time spent helping the teachers with their class behaviour. As a leader you need everyone working as one team to ensure that things are running as smoothly as possible.
Be As Organized As Possible. Messy desks, confusing timetables slow-running computers should be left elsewhere. In your school, you need to devote some time to inputting effective systems that go beyond your cleaning staff. Organization is imperative, and you should consider organizing your space your teacher meetings properly so that you have enough time to get to everything.
Eliminate Paper. As a school that chooses to embrace technology, you need to consider eliminating as much paperwork as possible. Preserving confidential information and reducing paper files are the first place to begin. Digitize all the documents that you do have and move them into the office cloud, and you can eliminate paper waste and save the environment. What an example to show to the school!
Feedback To Your Teachers. The children have their star charts and reward systems, and your teachers need the same thing - but of course, more mature! Build time into your schedule for regular teacher observations to give them feedback on how they are doing. The more your teachers know they’re doing a good job, the more they feel motivated to do it right. This leads to more productive staff as well as more efficient ways to work. It is also important that you help teachers hone teaching skills by imbibing right body language.
By choosing to make your school more efficient - whether that’s with excellent technology or teacher feedback - you can strengthen the way that you are as a leader and model the efficiency that you want with the school.