Making Time for Instructional Leadership 

Mrs. Beth Napleton

“I got into this work so I could make a difference with kids, so I could help them become inspired learners, people who are passionate about Judaism and living their values … and now…” 

The head of school sighed as her voice trailed off. An experienced leader of a small Jewish day school in a mid-sized city, she had been discussing with me the many hats she needed to wear, and she lamented how little time she was spending in classrooms and working with teachers. 

I knew exactly how she felt—my own past experiences founding and leading a 4th-12th-grade charter school in Chicago mirrored her current reality. I worked nonstop days that were packed—my calendar was full of meetings with parents, coffee with donors, reviewing financial statements, and helping put out the metaphorical small fires that come up day-to-day in schools. I didn’t mind any of them; yet, at the same time, these were not what I envisioned when I decided to start a school, and they certainly were not what gave me the passion to choose to work in education. 

A few years after my school had opened, an impromptu conversation with a student at recess one day sparked some serious soul-searching on my part. I realized I did not recognize what she was describing and what had been happening in her classes over the past month. It hit me: while I had been very hands-on in the early years of the school—coaching teachers and doing weekly walkthroughs, as the school had grown in size, my role had moved away from that instructional work and had become focused on securing a more permanent facility, launching a capital campaign, and managing the middle layer of leadership that had grown as the school had grown. Bigger school, bigger challenges—and so many of those seemed to land on my desk!   

Some part of me felt that, because I had invested so much time in the school’s early years, the team “got it” now. Along the way, I had hired good, smart people I trusted. I wanted to give my principals and instructional leaders the “autonomy to do their jobs.” In doing so, however, I unwittingly abdicated my role as instructional leader. In my heart of hearts, I’m a middle school reading and writing teacher, and realizing how little my job had to do with instructional leadership was very disheartening.   

Instructional Leadership  

We can define instructional leadership broadly as directing anything in the building that touches instruction. It could be coaching teachers, helping choose and implement a new curriculum, teaching a class (which can also be a model for others in the building), or working with staff to deepen skills within or across departments: for example, working with the math department to have students show their thinking more consistently. In essence, instructional leadership is any work that directly impacts the classroom, small group instruction, or student learning. 

Typically (and hopefully!), there are many leaders in the building who have instructional expertise and skill, and, likely, there are pressing issues that cross the school leader’s desk, no matter his or her specific role, that can only be handled by the school leader. Schools are busy places, leaders are busy people, and no one can do everything. 

All of this is true, and, at the same time, fundamentally, schools are places of learning. This is why they exist in our society! On the playground that day, I realized that I was like the rock-band leader getting ready for a performance who was thinking about everything from lighting to sound tech to seating to what the merch looked like, without focusing on the most important piece—the music people came to hear! 

Now, maybe you’re thinking, “Well, if you lead a big rock band, people know your music, so you don’t need to worry about that; that has been established.” This is a fair point. The band’s (or the school’s) reputation may be what gets people in the door. But does it keep them there? Do they come back for the next performance? There are more than a few well-known rock legends who have a reputation for being very disappointing live acts, which has ripple effects on their careers and earning potential. Similarly, in a school, your reputation and results have likely been built over many years. People know it in the community from their neighbors’ experience or from their own childhood. This thought may be comforting to you if your institution has a strong reputation, or frustrating if you believe its reputation is not what it should be, given the current state.  

Where to Begin 

The question that inevitably arises in any conversation with a leader is some variation of “Yes, but how do I lean more into instructional leadership?” Leaders have the same 24 hours a day as everyone else and often have many unique responsibilities that no one else has. I have never met a leader who spends all day twiddling his or her thumbs, wondering what to do. It can seem daunting, if not insurmountable, to find time in a busy schedule to make time for anything additional. 

The famous Chinese proverb says, “A journey of 1,000 miles begins with a single step,” and that is true on any leader’s journey to becoming more of an instructional leader. Small actions add up, and they compound. Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good. Being 1% more of an instructional leader than you have been before is a huge step in the right direction, making room for the next 1%, and the next, until soon you are 50% or 100% more of an instructional leader than you used to be! Focusing on how you can totally transform may leave you feeling overwhelmed and wanting to give up before you even start. We’ll explore some of the big picture ideas below on what you can do. I challenge you to take just one concrete next step out of these to help you move in the right direction. 

Your time as a leader is limited. To maximize your chances of instructional leadership success, you should start in a way that builds momentum and cements some habits and routines, which is likely in an area where you have existing expertise. Once you have a strong foundation, you can always grow from there. I had a deep instructional background in the humanities, so it was a natural place for me to start leaning in more. After all, it came easily to me, felt like a good way to leverage my years of experience, and, as a bonus, it was also really fun for me.  

Once I got into the habit of flexing my instructional leadership muscle and it became part of my regular routine and how I did my job, I was able to reflect on where the school needed my focused energy and attention: math. While I definitely had to embrace my “learner” hat more than I did in working with ELA and history—especially when it got into content specifics and I was brushing up on what exactly a “system of equations”  was—I was surprised by how much transferable knowledge there was to bring from general good instructional practice that was content-agnostic. The momentum was able to continue. Leaders I work with almost universally experience the same thing: when they start with an easier point of entry, they are more likely to stick with this shift. 

Finding Time 

Time is one of our most valuable (and often scarce!) resources as leaders. One recommendation I always have for leaders at the outset is to track where you are currently spending your time. Grab a legal pad and write the times of the day in 15-minute increments vertically down the side, and across the top write the five days of the week. (If you are more digital, this can easily be done in a spreadsheet.) For the next few days, jot down what you are doing during those times so you can track where it goes. You will need to find the time to do new things somewhere, and knowing where all your time is currently going is an important first step. 

You may discover that you spend more time responding to emails than you thought, or the 30-minute checkins you have are regularly stretching to 45 minutes. Many leaders I work with learn that people just popping in to ask a quick question can take hours from their day. Some have discovered that the walk back to their office from recess or lunchroom duty takes longer than they thought, since they are ushering students back to class or picking up lost items in the hall along the way. 

The very process of noting where you spend your time can lead to lightbulb moments about how you, as a leader, might shift your time. One leader I worked with started office hours after school for 30 minutes every day, letting her team know that if they wanted to “drop by with a quick question,” that was the appropriate time to do so. This freed up time during the school day, with fewer people dropping in at other times. A leader at a Manhattan day school I worked with realized that the volume of emails she was receiving from teachers was overwhelming and taking up much of her day. We set guidelines for when and how to use email, and we found that many of the matters she was being emailed about could be resolved without lengthy, time-consuming email correspondence.  

As you track your time, think about what you are doing that only you can do, and what you are doing that others may be able to do. A principal who spent time handing out clips and kippot to students realized that their executive assistant could easily do that. Truthfully, the principal had held onto that responsibility because he liked those interactions with students and that connection, and it was easy enough for him to do. Once he realized that it was taking away from his ability to be an instructional leader, it was easy to give the box of bobby pins to his assistant! Delegating tasks to others or restructuring roles a bit can go a long way to getting you more time.  

Changing in Public? 

Schools are dynamic places, so one person’s shift impacts others. The chances of success increase when more people know about the shift you are thinking about—leaning into instructional leadership—and what this means for the day-to-day life of the school. That said, you may be in a place now where people would be surprised to learn you have an instructional background, or they may feel like their own autonomy is threatened. This can be a tricky needle to thread, so let’s present two possibilities, and you can see what may work best for you. 

The first approach is to just start. Do more classroom walkthroughs, give more feedback, and participate more actively than before. There will likely be some surprised faces and reactions. The benefit of this element of surprise is that you can organically show your instructional knowledge, not just tell people about it. This can build credibility and show people its value. If people are surprised or ask questions about the change, respond simply with something like, “It seems right to be taking a more active role in instruction, so I’m leaning into that more.” Another benefit to this is that you can try out different activities, like co-observing a teacher, leading a debrief, doing a professional development session with more of an instructional lens, and see how it feels and goes, adjusting based on your experience.  

The other approach is one I typically took: consider your vision for this, keep people looped in, and give more advance warning about what’s happening. I recommend waiting for a transitional time such as the new school year or after a break, and give your people some notice by saying something like I did: “I’ve been reflecting a lot about my role here and realize that for someone who started a school, I’m not spending as much time in instruction as I would like, given that this is the beating heart of our school. So starting after spring break in a few weeks, I’m going to shift that and you’ll see me in classrooms, debriefs, and department meetings more.” 

Something that simple that all involved parties (including teachers) know about goes a long way. Your leadership team may have questions: “Does your feedback take precedence over mine? Will you lead the meeting if you’re there? How do you want us to act?” If you know what you’d like, share what you envision. If you don’t, say something like, “We’ll figure it out as we go—let’s keep the lines of communication open.” There’s great benefit in a period of trying to lean inmore, learning as you go, and then taking a step back to clarify roles and responsibilities or the impact. Giving people a little advance warning can help ease potential anxiety. 

Part of any leader’s role is setting vision and direction. Clarifying roles and responsibilities is essential, including who decides what, who owns what workstreams, where there should be overlap, and where there should not. For example, when I started leaning into math instruction more, I was clear with the math instructional leaders about what my role was, what theirs was, and how we would work together day to day. I told them that I would not be running the departmental meetings, but I would attend most of them. As a leader, I got a tremendous return on investment by working closely with the math instructional leadership team, setting vision and direction with them, and working together to define a clear, shared understanding of what excellence looked like.  

When to Start 

To quote another Chinese proverb: “The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second-best time is now.” There’s great value in simply taking the time now, like popping into a classroom tomorrow on your walk back from lunch and observing for a few minutes, or in asking a coach if you can observe their debrief with a teacher in a few days. If you begin this way, without warming up, even if you are the nicest and most approachable leader in the world, these actions can unintentionally make people feel concerned, wondering whether they are in trouble or doing something wrong. Reassuring them (often repeatedly) that you are in learning mode as you consider leaning into instructional leadership, or that you want to spend more time in the instructional world, is essential.  

Some periods of the year lend themselves to more of a full reset: for example, using the summer to reset for the next year, or coming back from a midyear break. Often, I will work with leaders who use the period from January to March to think about what they want to accomplish and set a vision, the time after Pesach to the end of the school year to experiment and pilot a bit, and then leverage the summer to set systems in place for the following year. It’s never the wrong time to start, though; it’s simply that some times of year lend themselves to this better than others. 

Becoming an Instructional Leader 

Leadership is always a work in progress, and there’s great benefit in taking the next step. Reflect on where that might be for your school. Maybe poll a few trusted colleagues, and then start, see what you learn, adjust, and go from there. 

That’s exactly what I did with the head of school on the call that day. We picked one thing to start with; in her case, it was tracking her time. For you, maybe it’s setting a timer and spending five minutes in a classroom you haven’t been in for a while, or moving your desk to a hallway so you can listen to what is happening inside classrooms during a time of day you’re normally in your office. Whatever you choose to do, you will learn from it, incorporate those lessons, and move forward in a new way, which is the heart of leadership itself. 

Beth Napleton has over 25 years of experience in schools, holding every leadership role from team lead to head of school. A former school founder and leader, she founded LevelEDUp Leadership in 2021 to partner with PK-12 school leaders navigating organizational shifts and transitions, ensuring their teams are aligned and effective, so students thrive. She has worked with 200+ leaders in 21 states and four countries. If you’re interested in small moves that make a big difference in your leadership, you can subscribe to the Mini Moves Monday newsletter she writes each week at leveledupleadership.kit.com/mmm, or subscribe to her Substack at bethnapleton.substack.com. 

• Print
• Email