Beginning the Principalship: A Practical Guide for New School Leaders- Being a Successful Principal: Riding the Wave of Change Without Drowning
- The Bully Free Classroom
- Educational Facilities: Planning, Modernization, and Management
- The Unlearning Leader: Leading for Tomorrow’s Schools Today
Operating a school district is a life-consuming occupation, and these five great books for school superintendents could offer insights, tips and guidance on making things go more smoothly and with less stress. Each of these five books is designed for school administrators including superintendents, principals and vice principals. Spending a little time each day reading one or more of these books for education leaders is a worthwhile investment of time and resources.
Beginning the Principalship: A Practical Guide for New School Leaders
Written by John C. Daresh, Beginning the Principalship: A Practical Guide for New School Leaders is for people who are new to educational leadership. It is for principals and superintendents. This book is designed to introduce best practices for managing students, parents and staff. It also offers guidelines and best practices for management of schools and other educational facilities.
Being a Successful Principal: Riding the Wave of Change Without Drowning
Being a Successful Principal: Riding the Wave of Change Without Drowning is a set of stories and anecdotes compiled by David R. Schumaker and William A. Sommers. They reached out to superintendents and school principals from across the United States in order to glean their wisdom so that they could share it with others. This is light reading and ideal for some downtime.
The Bully Free Classroom
Bullying is a problem in every school and every district, and The Bully Free Classroom by Allan L. Beane provides guidance for teachers, staff, principals and superintendents on how to eliminate bullying in their schools. The book includes specific tips that can be used in different places within a school, including gym class, hallways, the lunch room and the playground. Although this book is focused on the kindergarten to eighth grade classes, teachers and educational leaders can use it for high school environments as well.
Educational Facilities: Planning, Modernization, and Management
Educational Facilities: Planning, Modernization, and Management, written by Richard Bauscher and E. Michael Poe, examines the educational facilities of different school districts. The premise of the book is that every superintendent wants their facilities to be top-notch, but they don’t always have the funding to make that happen. The authors include a 10-step process for successfully writing and campaigning for school levies so that school districts can improve, upgrade and strengthen their facilities. One of the authors has managed to achieve a 90 percent success rate of levies passing, and those levies passed with an average 74 percent “yes” vote.
The Unlearning Leader: Leading for Tomorrow’s Schools Today
The Unlearning Leader: Leading for Tomorrow’s Schools Today explores the concept of “unlearning.” This refers to the idea that educational leaders need to get rid of some of their preconceived notions about what works or what has to be done a certain way. When they do this, they can open their minds to fresh ideas that might work better in modern schools. This book is written by Michael Lubelfeld and Nick Polyak, explains the School Superintendents Association.
Related Resource: Master’s in Educational Leadership
Reading one of these books is an ideal way to start a day, spend a quiet lunch break or pass some time in the evening at home. Superintendents who make use of public transportation to get to and from their offices could use that time to read a few chapters of these books each day. Each of these five great books for school superintendents is designed to offer valuable information about different aspects of the job and fulfilling this important social and leadership role in the community.
