My Typical Week as a KIPP School Leader

So you want to be a KIPP school leader? Good, because it’s a great job and I don’t think I could love any job more than this one. 

But you probably have lots of questions and one of them might be just how hard this job is and what kind of hours you’re going to be working. I don’t think I’ve seen a good breakdown anywhere of what a typical week looks like for a KIPP school leader, or really any charter school principal so I figured I would share what a typical week looks like for me.

Before we dive in, here are a bunch of caveats:

• This is what my week looks like and I’m sure there are school leaders who work way more than I do and some who might work less. I can only speak for myself.

• I’m in my third year doing this so I’m hopefully more efficient at my job than I was in year one and I can work fewer hours. 

• I have two young sons so my schedule naturally revolves around my family more than other folks.

• Sustainability for teachers and leaders is a key initiative at KIPP and has been a big part of our work at KPEA since we opened. Our staff culture overall is way less intense than some other KIPP schools so you’ll see that reflected in my schedule. 

• There really is no “normal” week in this job, which is part of what makes it fun but I tried as best I could to capture what is most typical in a week.

Weekend:

• I work for 3-4 hours on either Saturday or Sunday morning (but not both) sending out the staff Weekly Memo, setting up my observation and coaching meetings, responding to emails from the end of the week, and setting my weekly objectives.

• During nap time or after the kids go to bed, I probably work another 4-5 hours over the course of the weekend. I make it a point during the weekend and on weeknights to never do work when the kids are awake.

A Typical Workday: 

• I get up around 6am most mornings and am at school between 6:45am and 7:00am. I live 8 minutes from the school which makes the morning commute pretty easy. 

• From the time I get in until kids start arriving at 7:30am, I’m informally checking in with teachers, having scheduled coaching meetings, or meeting with parents. 

• From 7:30am to 8:00am I greet our kindergarten students as they are dropped off in our parking lot. Our Assistant Principal or Director of Operations greets our 1st and 2nd graders as they get off the bus at our front entrance. This is one of my favorite times of the day because I get to spend some informal time with other staff members on drop-off duty and see so many of our kids and families excited for the day. We do this outside greeting even in the rain, ice, or cold weather so that our kids and their families get to see a smiling, familiar face each morning as they come into the building no matter what. 

• 8am-11:30am – During the morning hours I am doing one of a hundred things. I’m doing instructional walkthroughs of our classrooms, observing teachers, handling students sent to the office for misbehaving, talking with families, meeting with leadership staff, giving tours, teaching classes for absent teachers, etc. Every single day is different, but it’s pretty much non-stop one way or another. I try to squeeze in 30 minutes of work time each morning, but that doesn’t always happen. 

• 11:30am- 1pm – Our students eat lunch in three shifts during this block and I try to be in the cafeteria for a good chunk of this time so I can check in with specific students and help teachers help our kids make good choices at lunch (no, that’s not how we eat our oranges). 

• 1pm-4pm – More teachers have their planning periods during the afternoon so I tend to have more coaching meetings during this time. I normally have about 5 teachers I’m observing and meeting with each week, on top of meetings with school leadership members. I also have regular meetings with regional staff like our CEO (to talk about everything since he’s my boss), the Director of Finance (to talk budget), and our Director of Talent (to talk hiring). I also teach more often in the afternoon when teachers have to leave early for appointments or because of child-care needs.

• 4pm-4:15pm – This is our dismissal time and I’m in the cafeteria with our 150 1st and 2nd graders making sure they are getting on the right bus. This is a complicated process especially since some students have differing routines on different days. My role is to make sure students are all in the right place and following instructions while teachers take attendance for each bus before walking them outside. 

• 4:15pm-5:15pm – We have a variety of after school meetings happening during this hour. Depending on the day, it could be a grade level meeting, a staff meeting, intervention/student support meetings for a particular homeroom, or nothing at all. These meetings happen on a rotating schedule with most teachers having 2-3 meetings per week. On days that they have no meetings, they can leave as early as 4:15pm. One of the great things about being in our third year is most of these meetings are led by other great leaders in our building and I get to sit in as a participant or pop into a variety of meetings like on Mondays when all of our grade levels have their weekly meetings. I lead our staff meetings which happen every other Wednesday. 

• 5:15 – 5:45ish – After meetings wrap up, I might have a meeting with a teacher or informally meet with our Assistant Principal to debrief the day. I try to leave the building by about 5:45pm so I can be home by 6pm. Sometimes it’s earlier than this and often it’s a bit later, but I’m almost always home by 6:30am unless there is some special event like a prospective teacher open house. 

• 6pm-9pm – Family time! I get home, eat dinner with my wife and kids, and then play with my 2 year old and almost 4 month old for a few hours. They’re normally both in bed by about 9pm. Like I wrote above, I don’t do any work while they are awake. 

• 9pm-11:30ish – Depending on the night, this is time for catching up on some cheesy TV shows with my wife, responding to emails from the day, or planning for an upcoming meeting. I try to be in bed by 11:30pm, but that doesn’t happen too often.

So that’s my week. I’m sure some folks are looking at it and thinking working about 70 hours a week is crazy, while maybe others are thinking that doesn’t look too bad. All I can say is that at this stage in my life, this works for me, my family, and KPEA. And that working this many hours can be a lot of fun if you love your job. 

One of My Favorite Books

If you're reading this piece, you've probably already read the great NYT piece on three college students from Galveston, TX and their bumpy road trying to not only make it to college, but to graduate. Lots of smart people have already responded to the piece and there's not much more that I have to add. But the piece did contain some quotes from a UPenn sociologist named Annette Lareau who wrote one of my favorite education/parenting books, called Unequal Childhoods. This is my pitch to convince you to read it.

• Lareau's work is grounded in hundreds of hours of field work with real families from a variety of races and classes. These rich experiences allows her to get past easy stereotypes, pop-psychology analysis, and judgement rooted in classism and racism that often mar these important conversations. In other words, she's not Ruby Payne.    

• The thesis of the book is that different social classes (and because of the segregation inherent in our American society, different races) raise their children in different ways. This argument verges on stereotyping, but Lareau walks this delicate line really well in the book. To summarize a complex argument, Lareau finds that poor and working class families parent with an idea of "natural growth" where kids are basically who they are and a parent's main responsibility is to keep them safe and happy. On the other hand, middle and upper class families practice what Lareau calls "concerted cultivation" where parents take an incredibly active role in bringing out the potential of their child. As a quick example, a child from a parent from a poorer family will likely only sign up her son for the age group basketball team if he really asks to, while a parent from a middle or upper class family is likely to sign a child up for the basketball team even if the child isn't that interested because it will be "good for him". Middle class families are looking for how to develop their kids and prepare them for what's next, while lower income families are more interested in kids being happy kids.

• Where the book is so valuable is Lareau's steadfast even-handedness in comparing and contrasting the two parenting styles and the effects of each on children. Wealthier families expose their children to more cultural experiences, advocate for them more in school, and sign their children up for more organized sports or dance classes. Children from poorer families have much closer relationships with their families, are less stressed out from constantly bouncing from activity to activity, and learn to be more independent at an earlier age. While both styles of parenting have their advantages, Lareau argues (like she does in the NYT article) that the skills wealthier children learn, like being able to advocate for yourself to get what you need from large institutional systems, are better matched with what is needed to be a successful adult in the United States in 2012. In other words, kids from more affluent families are taught to play the game. 

• When I read this book with my educator hat on, I think about things like how to teach my students to have the confidence that will allow them to go to the financial aid office at their college when they think something is wrong with their bill or how to engage our families at KPEA so we make our school a place they feel confident asking questions of teachers and being a real partner in this work. As a parent, I think about how not to be some of the more affluent families in the book, who are full of busy, unhappy adults and kids running non-stop from activities they think will give their children an "advantage" in life. I think about how to help my children have the right amount of self-confidence without being entitled. I think about how to make sure they have the unstructured time to just be a kid.

I've barely done justice to the book and the deep implications for parents, teachers, and school leaders. I can't recommend it enough.