Chapter 12: Leaders Helping Leaders: Mentoring After Mentoring Ends

The job of being a leader of schools is rapidly becoming a job that is increasingly complex, frustrating, and far less appealing to teachers who are seeking future leadership opportunities. In the past, school principals were busy people, with typical time commitments to the job approaching 65 to 70 hours of work each week. The position often included responsibilities associated with evaluating teachers and staff, maintaining the physical plant of their schools, disciplining students, planning and overseeing budgets, reporting school activities to central offices, the state departments of education, and above all, keeping in contact with parents and local community groups (Jacobson & Reavis, 1941). Time left each day would be open to focus on assisting teachers in finding ways to actually teach students more effectively and improving learning opportunities (Andrews & Soder, 1987). Today, these aspects of principals’ duties also include maintaining relations with the media and overseeing the complexities associated with demonstrating compliance with laws and policies designed to track school accountability in terms of student learning. In most cases, this translates as the oversight of school and student performance on standardized testing measures (Leithwood & Jantzi, 2005). In short, those who are now entering the world of school administration as principals and assistant principals are entering a profession with traditional responsibilities such as those listed above, and with more stress associated with addressing mandates comprised of often confusing practices established by local school systems, state governments, and the U.S. Department of Education (Kruse, Louis, & Byrk, 1994). A difficult job has been made even more demanding. Concern about these known stressors faced by principals is resulting in fewer individuals considering career advancement as school-based administrators.