The Wildflower Within

When I think about the role of the principal, I often come back to where the position began. The word principal carries the idea of being first or chief, and historically, the school principal developed from the role of the principal teacher—the lead teacher in the school who eventually took on additional responsibilities for organizing and overseeing the work of the school.

I love that history because it connects me back to what I believe should still be at the center of this job. Becoming a principal didn’t mean I stopped being a teacher. My responsibility for teaching and learning simply became much bigger. Instead of being responsible for what was happening in one classroom, I became responsible for helping create the conditions for strong teaching and learning across an entire campus.

Now, seven years into the principalship, there are things experience has taught me about protecting that responsibility. One of the biggest is that if I don’t intentionally protect the instructional work of the principal, everything else will find a way to take its place.

This isn’t something I am just beginning to figure out. It is something I have learned through years of doing the work, getting pulled in too many directions, developing people, building systems, adjusting those systems, and seeing what happens when there isn’t clarity around who owns what.

That experience is really where Protecting the Work comes from.

When Everything Feels Important

There is never a shortage of things that need attention in a school. Parents call. Someone walks into the office. A teacher needs something. A student situation comes up. There are emails, meetings, district requests, paperwork, staffing concerns, deadlines, and usually at least a few things that nobody anticipated when the day began.

Some of those things absolutely require the principal. Many of them don’t.

One of the most important distinctions I have learned to make is the difference between being informed and being involved. I want to know what is happening on my campus. I want my staff to communicate with me, and I want families to know that I care about their concerns. But knowing about something does not automatically mean I need to become the person responsible for handling it.

When the principal becomes involved in everything, it doesn’t just create an impossible workload. It can also unintentionally take responsibility away from other people who are completely capable of doing the work. Over time, people can learn to bring problems to the principal rather than working through them themselves.

That doesn’t build capacity, and it certainly doesn’t protect the work.

Accessible Doesn’t Have to Mean Immediately Available

I want parents to know that I am accessible. I want them to feel comfortable contacting the school, and if they genuinely need to speak with me, I want there to be a clear way for that to happen. I also want my staff to know that I am available when they need my support.

But experience has taught me that being accessible and being immediately available are not the same thing.

A parent calling and asking for the principal does not necessarily mean I should leave a PLC at that moment. A phone call coming into the front office doesn’t automatically need to be transferred to me. A concern can be important without becoming an immediate interruption.

There are certainly exceptions. If we are dealing with a safety concern, an emergency, a serious student situation, or something that specifically requires principal authority, then the normal process changes. Those are the situations when someone needs to find me.

For everything else, there can be a process.

I don’t believe having a process makes a school less responsive to families. I actually think the opposite can be true. When roles are clear, parents can be connected more quickly with the person who is actually in the best position to help them rather than waiting for the principal to become available.

The Right Person May Not Be the Principal

If a parent calls about something happening in the classroom, the classroom teacher is often the person with the most information. The teacher knows the student, the instruction, the assignments, the classroom environment, and the context surrounding what has happened.

I also think it is important to respect the teacher’s role in that relationship. Most of us who have been classroom teachers would have been frustrated to learn that a parent had a concern about our classroom but went directly to administration without ever giving us the opportunity to address it. Teachers need opportunities to communicate with their families, answer questions, solve problems, and build those relationships themselves.

That doesn’t mean a parent should always have to begin with the teacher. There may be a legitimate reason that isn’t appropriate. This isn’t about creating a rigid chain of command that parents have to fight their way through. It is about looking at the concern and asking who is in the best position to help.

The same thing applies throughout the school. A counselor may be the right person for a social-emotional concern. Attendance, enrollment, or records questions may belong with the staff member responsible for those areas. Different people on a campus have different expertise and responsibilities, and I don’t need to take those responsibilities over simply because I am the principal.

When a situation does require administrative support, I also believe the assistant principal should generally be the first administrative point of contact. The assistant principal needs the opportunity to problem-solve, communicate with families, make decisions within that role, and grow as a leader.

The principal should not automatically be step one.

In many situations, the principal should actually be the last point of escalation—when the appropriate people have already had an opportunity to address the concern, when the assistant principal has provided administrative support, when something remains unresolved, or when the situation truly requires the principal’s authority or attention.

That isn’t about avoiding difficult conversations. It is about allowing people to do the jobs we have entrusted them to do.

You Can’t Delegate Without Building Capacity

This is the part of protecting instructional time that I think can easily get missed. I can’t simply tell my office staff, “Don’t interrupt me while I’m in PLCs,” and expect that to work.

If I want people to take ownership, I have to give them enough clarity to confidently do so.

My office staff need to understand the roles on our campus well enough to know where a concern should go. They need to know what questions to ask when someone calls, what should begin with the classroom teacher, when a concern needs administrative support, and what warrants finding me immediately. They also need a way to keep me informed without feeling like they have to physically interrupt whatever I am doing every time something happens.

Sometimes that may be a message through our district’s instant messaging system. Sometimes it is an email or a phone message. Sometimes my secretary, who has access to my calendar, can ask me about scheduling a meeting with a parent at a time when I can actually give that parent my full attention.

The goal isn’t to make it difficult to reach me. The goal is to create enough clarity that everything doesn’t automatically have to come through me.

The same is true with an assistant principal. I can’t say I want my AP to grow as a leader while stepping in front of that person every time a situation becomes difficult. Building capacity means giving people opportunities to work through situations, make decisions, communicate, and problem-solve while knowing that I am there when they genuinely need my support.

The System Around the Calendar Is What Protects It

For a long time, I think we have talked about protecting a principal’s time primarily as a calendar issue. Block off the PLC. Schedule walkthroughs. Put data meetings on the calendar. Reserve time for planning.

Those things matter, but experience has taught me that a calendar block alone doesn’t protect anything.

If everyone around you still believes that every phone call, walk-in, question, and concern should come directly to the principal, those calendar blocks will disappear pretty quickly. The system around the calendar is what actually protects the time.

For parent communication, that begins with listening and gathering enough information to understand what is happening. Instead of immediately asking, “Is the principal available?” the conversation becomes, “What is the concern, and who is the right person to help with it?”

If it is classroom-related, that may be the teacher. If it involves social-emotional support, it may be the counselor. Attendance and enrollment questions go to the people responsible for those areas. If the concern is ongoing, complex, or requires administrative support, it can move to the assistant principal. If it ultimately requires my involvement, then it comes to me.

I can still be informed along the way without becoming the owner of every step.

My Calendar Should Reflect What I Say Matters

If I tell my staff that instruction is our priority, then at some point my calendar has to reflect that.

I need to be in PLCs. I need to be in classrooms. I need time to look at student work and data. I need to coach, give feedback, monitor the systems we have put in place, and determine whether what we are doing is actually making a difference for students.

Those responsibilities cannot continually become the things I do if there is time left over, because there will never be time left over in a principal’s day.

That doesn’t mean those things can never be interrupted. Schools don’t work that way. Emergencies happen. Children need us. Serious situations arise unexpectedly, and sometimes the plan for the day has to change completely.

What I don’t want is for every situation to be treated like an emergency simply because we haven’t created another way to handle it.

There is a difference between responding when the principal is truly needed and operating in a system where the principal is always the default.

What This Looks Like With Parents

I am very intentional about not wanting this process to feel like a wall between families and the school. Protecting instructional leadership time should never become an excuse for being unresponsive.

If a parent ultimately needs to meet with me, we schedule the meeting. My secretary has access to my calendar and, with my approval, can find a time for us to meet. Whenever possible, I would much rather schedule that conversation than be pulled unexpectedly from a PLC or classroom visit and try to address an important concern while my attention is divided.

I think parents deserve better than that too. When we have a scheduled meeting, I can know what the concern is beforehand, make sure the appropriate people are involved, and give the parent my full attention.

The same idea applies to how we connect families with other members of the team. I don’t want a parent to feel as though we are simply passing them from one person to another. There is a big difference between saying, “You need to contact the teacher,” and saying, “This sounds like something your child’s teacher can best help you with. Let me connect you.”

That is where the idea of the warm handoff becomes important.

If I am responding by email and the teacher is the appropriate person to help, I can include the teacher in the email, briefly explain why I am connecting them, and allow the teacher to take the next step. If the counselor needs to help, I can include the counselor. If the assistant principal is taking ownership of the concern, I can bring the AP into the communication.

The parent doesn’t have to start over, and everyone knows who owns the next step.

That feels much more like support than simply redirecting someone.

Someone Has to Own the Next Step

A process only works if concerns don’t disappear once they have been handed off.

Years ago, I used a Parent Concern/Request for Conference form that captured information about the concern, what action had been taken, and who was responsible for following up. As I thought about that process again, I realized that the form itself was never really the important part.

What mattered was the expectation behind it: someone owns the next step.

If the office receives a concern and connects the parent with a teacher, there should be follow-through. If something moves to the assistant principal, there should be follow-through there too. If a concern eventually reaches me, I should be able to understand what has already happened rather than asking the parent to start the entire story again.

Documentation isn’t about creating more paperwork. It is about making sure communication doesn’t get lost and families aren’t left wondering whether anyone is actually addressing their concern.

Protecting the Work Is Also About Developing People

The more I have worked within this kind of system, the more I have seen that protecting instructional leadership time is only one benefit. The other is the development of the people around me.

If every difficult parent concern comes directly to me, my assistant principal loses opportunities to grow in that area. If I answer every classroom concern, teachers lose opportunities to strengthen their relationships with families. If my office staff are only expected to answer the phone and transfer calls, they never develop the knowledge and confidence to help families navigate the school.

Seven years into this role, I know that supporting people does not always mean stepping in and doing the work for them. Sometimes the better leadership move is giving someone else the clarity, authority, and support to handle it well.

I can stay informed. I can coach when needed. I can step in when the situation warrants it. But I don’t have to become the owner of every problem in order to be an effective principal.

In fact, sometimes stepping back is exactly what allows someone else to step up.

Protecting the Work

This is why the phrase Protecting the Work feels more accurate to me than simply protecting my time.

This isn’t really about my time.

It is about protecting the work I believe the principal is supposed to be doing.

I keep coming back to that original idea of the principal teacher because there are countless responsibilities competing for a principal’s attention every day. The operational work matters. Parent communication matters. Discipline matters. Staffing matters. Supporting teachers and families matters. All of it is part of leading a school.

But none of it should quietly push teaching and learning to the edges of the job.

If the roots of this role are in the principal as the lead teacher, then I want teaching and learning to remain at the center of my principalship. I want to know what students are learning. I want to know what teachers need. I want to be part of conversations about instruction. I want to look at student work, study our data, and know whether the systems we are putting in place are actually producing better outcomes for students.

Seven years into the principalship, these are things experience has taught me. Everything cannot become a principal problem. Being accessible does not require being immediately available. My assistant principal cannot fully grow if I continually step around that role. Teachers need opportunities to build relationships and solve problems with their families. Office staff can do much more when we give them clear processes and trust them to use those processes. And if I say teaching and learning are the priority, I have to protect the time that allows me to actually lead teaching and learning.

For me, Protecting the Work is about being clear about what belongs to me, building the capacity of the people around me, and making sure the work of the principal teacher doesn’t get lost underneath everything else that comes with being the principal.

Turning the System Into a Toolkit

As I started writing about all of this, I realized I didn’t want to simply talk about protecting instructional leadership time. So much of what I have learned over the past seven years is that protecting the work requires more than deciding that something is important. It requires a system around it.

I can block PLCs, classroom visits, coaching, data review, and planning on my calendar, but those blocks don’t mean much if the people around me don’t know what should interrupt that time, who should handle different concerns, or when something truly needs to reach the principal. The calendar is only one piece. The processes and people around it are what actually protect the work.

That is what led me to create Protecting the Work: Parent Communication & Administrative Escalation Toolkit.

I took the pieces of the system I have developed and put them into one practical resource for other school leaders. It includes guidance for protecting instructional leadership time, a process for parent calls and emails, a role clarity guide, phone call scripts, email templates for creating warm handoffs, and a Parent Concern & Follow-Up Form so that concerns don’t simply get passed along—they are actually followed through to resolution.

The purpose isn’t to create a rigid chain of command or make it harder for families to reach the principal. It’s really the opposite. When everyone understands their role, families can get to the right person more quickly, staff members have opportunities to build their own capacity and relationships, assistant principals have room to lead, and the principal can remain informed without becoming the owner of every situation.

And, just like everything else I share, I don’t believe there is one perfect system that will work exactly the same way on every campus. Different schools have different staffing structures, district expectations, parent communities, and procedures. This is simply a framework built from what experience has taught me—something another leader can take, adapt, and make work for their own school.

Protecting the Work 🖤

Parent Communication & Administrative Escalation Toolkit

The toolkit includes 8 ready-to-use leadership tools designed to help principals, assistant principals, and school leadership teams create clearer systems for parent communication while protecting the instructional work at the center of school leadership.

Created for school leaders who want to support their people, serve their families, and keep teaching and learning at the center of the work.

Stay Connected 🖤

Seven years into the principalship, I know there will always be room to grow. Every year brings different people, different challenges, and different lessons. But I also think there is value in sharing the things experience has already taught us. Sometimes something that took one leader years to work through can make the work a little clearer for someone else.

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I don’t have every part of leadership figured out, and seven years in, I don’t expect that I ever will. Every year is different. But there are things experience has taught me that I now know are worth protecting.

The work of the principal teacher is one of them.

Julie | The Wildflower Within 🖤
Keep Becoming.