Fitz’s Blog
How are your Communication skills? Are you a good listener?
How a leader communicates will determine his or her success! Of all the communicative skill: messaging, writing, listening, and speaking, by far LISTENING is the most important! In the book Beyond Theories and Degrees: The Alley Smarts of Educational Leadership, by...
Do you run an effective meeting?
Time is precious, have you ever been to a meeting that was a pure waste of your time? In leadership there is an old saying; “you can’t live with meetings or without them!” In Beyond Theories and Degrees: The Alley Smarts of Educational Leadership, author Dr. James...
What are the processes every school leader must master in order to be success?
In the Book Beyond Theories and Degrees: The Alley Smarts of Educational Leadership, author Dr. James Fitzpatrick shares his POCDICE THEORY (Planning, Organization, Communication, Decision-Making, Influence, and Evaluation) on pages 17-29. In plain speak and from a...
As a Building Principal do you build LEADERSHIP capacity in your teachers and staff?
Many principals go to the same people on their staffs to lead initiatives? This results in a Star system, and while these stars are to be admired for the good things they do, are others on the staff stifled in never having a chance to lead? One of the most important...
In a Flourishing School Culture, the little things can mean a LOT!
The best leaders grasp that people are more important than process. In a given school year, many things can happen within a learning community. If the culture is not strong, things can deteriorate rapidly. In Beyond Theories and Degrees: The Alley Smarts of...
Building your knowledge base when you begin a Principalship or Superintendency
Along with the excitement in being appointed as a Principal or Superintendent, there also comes with it some anxiety and fear of the unknown. In Beyond Theories and Degrees: The Alley Smarts of Educational Leadership, author Dr. James E. Fitzpatrick suggests on pages...
Do we provide great Mentors for our Youth to become eventual School Leaders?
How many of us can look back to our most impressionable days and reflect upon the impact our mentors had on us? What was it that these mentors saw in us, that made them invest their time and energy in developing our personal potential? In Beyond Theories and Degrees:...
Growing our own Principals!
We need great principals in our schools. In the state of Illinois, according to Dr. Jason Leahy, Executive Director of the Illinois Principal’s Association (IPA) “we are in a crisis in finding good leaders to fill the many principal vacancies.” We may have these...