Bulletin Board: Support

Looking Toward the Next 100 Years of NAESP

For the past year, NAESP has proudly celebrated 100 years of service, leadership, and advocacy for elementary and middle-level principals. In 1921, 51 principals founded NAESP as an organization that prioritized the principal profession to ensure that school leaders were equipped to do their jobs and the profession would thrive for years to come. A century later, the association has done just that, evolving right along with the profession.

Over the last year, NAESP has joined with its members to celebrate the association’s rich history of school leaders who advocated for the education profession, kept education a national priority, and ignited a passion for learning among students.

Continue to celebrate with us at naesp.org/about/history and at #ACenturyOfNAESP on social media as we look forward to the next 100 years of service, leadership, and advocacy for NAESP.

Next Up: Advocacy and Engagement

The next issue of Principal magazine will focus on advocacy and engagement. Principals’ roles have become politicized, but school leaders are still some of the best advocates for policies and funding that provide all children with quality education. This issue will cover some steps you can take to navigate divides, inform policymakers, and promote meaningful solutions at the local, state, and national levels. Plus, you’ll find strategies to build on the relationships with families and communities that deepened during the pandemic.

Coming Up: Equity, Assessment, and Accountability

You’re probably not thinking about closing out your school year yet, but the Principal magazine team is. We’re looking for articles for the May/June 2022 issue of Principal. The issue will take a deep look at how the pandemic exposed systemic inequities in education and ways in which schools can overcome biases in curriculum, instruction, assessment, and processes.

Many school districts had to deemphasize improvement agendas in curriculum and assessment to address day-to-day goals during the pandemic. Distance learning revealed that certain homework assignments were not equitable, and many principals are concerned that statewide testing performed during the pandemic will reveal weaknesses that result in additional oversight of schools and staff cuts. If you have insight into these challenges and their solutions, consider contributing to this issue of Principal. The deadline is Dec. 3, 2021. Find details and submission guidance at naesp.org/writing.

Lessons in Shared Leadership

Principals who empower their teams—assistant principals, teacher leaders, and the entire school staff—to be part of leadership decisions often win greater staff buy-in, a sense of collaboration, and a unified focus that culminate in better outcomes for everyone in a school, from students and teachers to school families and the community.

NAESP has created a suite of Leading Lessons guides principals can use to discuss and develop game plans for emerging and important issues in their schools with their staff. Each features background into a specific issue, strategies and best practices to achieve success, and reflection questions to help staff become more forward-thinking and tailor the tips to meet the specific needs of your school community. Here are just a handful of the topics available:

• Flip the Script on Staff Engagement: Empower your faculty and staff through collaborative, interactive, and focused staff meetings.
• Forward Focus: Reflect on the lessons learned from the pandemic, and map out a strategy to begin building schools for the future that focus on the needs of all students, faculty and staff, and school families.
• Shared Leadership: Go back to your roots and reset your approach to strategic thinking as you develop or improve your shared leadership strategy.
• Advocating for Equity: Tackle tough questions as a team to empower everyone in the school community—principals, assistant principals, teachers, and families alike—to become advocates for equity.
• Literacy Leaders: Develop a continuous improvement process to evaluate, build, implement, and sustain evidence-​based literacy practices to improve student achievement and retain quality teachers.

Find the complete suite of Leading Lessons guides—an NAESP members-only benefit—at naesp.org/leadinglessons.