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Leaders of the new school

January 23, 2025   ·   0 Comments

By Anthony Carnovale

I once suggested to a principal that I was considering a move into administration.

I had been thinking about it for a few days and started to play with the idea of what my life would look like if I had made the move.

Her response? She laughed. Like, one of those straight-from-the-gut types of laughs. I started to laugh, too. Truthfully, I wasn’t offended by her response.

I liked her as a person (nobody else did), but she was one of the most polarizing principals I had ever worked for (trust me – this is not me being sour). I mean, how could I respect her opinion when I couldn’t respect most of the decisions she had made as our school leader?

I’ve been teaching for over 20 years. I’ve seen plenty of school administrators come and go. Only a few have impressed me. Most of the principals I have worked for were average educators at best.

You see, in my eyes, the best educators stay in the classroom. To get into admin you have to learn how to play the game (and if you’re playing the game, where is the time for teaching and students?).

The ‘players’ are the teachers who are always hovering in and around the office. They’re saying the right things and asking the right questions (which always solicits the wrong answer). They sit on committees. They’re the ones that always tense up when a principal walks past. Their heads, and hearts, always seem to be someplace else.

Let me be clear: I’ve worked with some very good leaders. I remember walking behind a principal and seeing him pick up trash in the halls. There was nobody in the halls to see him do it, but me. He was a man who let you teach and didn’t feel the need to micro-manage as long as your priorities were with the students and the classroom. You are who you are when nobody is watching.

I’ve also worked for a principal who cracked sexist jokes over the PA system. There was that principal that got caught stealing money from the cafeteria register. There was the principal that took away a library budget so that he could build a giant scoreboard for the football field. There was the administrator who, after paying for the fares of 15 students to fly overseas on his personal credit card, used his points from that same card to upgrade his seat to first-class, while students and teachers sat in economy.

When a leader makes these types of decisions, what types of decisions do you think they make when it comes to pedagogy and our kids? As educators, we are accountable to our school community. If we’re going to take credit for helping kids, we also have to take credit for hurting them, as well.

A leader in education should have a clear vision; they should be able to adapt and lead. It’s important to foster and promote a positive school culture; have high expectations; be self-aware and transparent. Above all, an administrator needs to be present. Am I asking too much?

I’ve been thinking about leadership a lot these past few months; brooding over the broader crisis in leadership in our communities, our country, the world.

This week, Donald Trump was elected to his second term as leader of the US. Trump has been found guilty of fraud. Trump is a convicted felon. I see the people he is surrounding himself with, people who have shown a complete disregard for our basic rights and freedoms. I mean, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos and Tim Cook scored front-row seats to Trump’s inauguration. The U.S. is looking more and more like Russia every single day.

Here in Canada, parliament has been prorogued. In a recent column, Thomas Homer-Dixon wrote about the dire need for Canadian leaders to have a strong spine, “but it’s hard to have a spine when you don’t have a head.” And who is most likely to wear the crown next?Pierre Poilievre, a man more interested in sound bites than policy. His jokes are way too polished for me to take him seriously. It’s painful to watch. It’s as if his role models are Skibidi Toilet (don’t look him up) and Mr. Beast.

Dufferin-County’s own MP, Kyle Seeback, likes a good joke, too. There he is, on TV, usually just over Poilievre’s shoulder, playing the game, laughing at his leader’s quips and barbs. With so many Canadians hurting and suffering, what exactly do our leaders find so funny?

I just feel like we’re all being played. Like, we think we’re playing a game of Risk when what we’re really playing is Uno. Our leaders are abandoning us. They’re flying first class while the rest of us are left to fight over the aisle seat. 


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