Walk into any school in the weeks and days before teachers return, and you’ll find people working hard to prepare for another year. Classrooms getting organized. Master schedules being adjusted. The opening day plans being brought to life. It’s a lot of energy, and a lot of work.
Those things matter. Schools don’t open successfully without careful planning, and every principal understands the importance of making sure the building is ready for students.
But after spending years as a principal and superintendent, and now Coaching school leaders across the country, I’ve become convinced that the most important preparation isn’t happening in classrooms, cafeterias, or front offices.
It’s happening within the leaders.
Operational readiness is essential, but leadership readiness is transformational. Before the first teacher walks through your doors, your greatest responsibility isn’t simply preparing the building. It’s preparing yourself and your leadership team to lead the people who will make the building successful.
“You aren’t preparing the building. You’re preparing yourself and your leadership team to lead the people who will make the building successful.”
If you intentionally focus on these five areas before staff returns, you’ll create the conditions for a stronger start—not just for yourself, but for every adult and student in your building.
The beginning of a school year has a way of making everything feel urgent. Within days, you’ll be responding to parent concerns, solving staffing issues, covering classrooms, answering emails, attending meetings, and putting out the inevitable fires that accompany a new school year. None of those responsibilities are optional, but they can quickly consume every minute of your day if you’re not careful.
That’s why your leadership team needs Clarity before the chaos begins.
Take time together to identify the three or four priorities that will define your leadership this year. Maybe it’s improving Tier 1 instruction, strengthening your school culture, increasing the effectiveness of PLCs, or creating greater consistency in student behavior. Whatever those priorities are, every administrator in your building should be able to articulate them clearly and explain why they matter.
I’ve often said that clarity is one of the greatest gifts a leader can provide. Teachers can’t align around priorities they don’t understand, and leadership teams can’t protect priorities they haven’t intentionally established. When difficult decisions arise—and they will—those priorities become the filter through which every decision is made.
Before your staff returns, ask yourself this question: If someone followed our leadership team for the first month of school, what would they conclude are our true priorities?
Teachers notice leadership alignment far sooner than most principals realize. They aren’t looking for inconsistency; they’re simply trying to understand what success looks like. When one administrator communicates a different expectation than another or similar situations receive different responses, uncertainty begins to replace confidence.
Strong leadership teams don’t leave consistency to chance.
Before staff arrives, spend time discussing how you’ll lead together. Talk about how you’ll communicate expectations, respond to student behavior, support struggling teachers, celebrate success, and navigate difficult conversations. More importantly, discuss how you’ll handle disagreement. Healthy leadership teams don’t always agree, but they do commit to working through those disagreements privately so they can lead publicly with one voice.
One of the greatest mistakes leadership teams make is assuming alignment will happen naturally because they enjoy working together. It won’t. Alignment requires intentional conversations, shared expectations, and a commitment to putting the team’s success ahead of individual preferences.
Your staff doesn’t need three or four individual administrators leading independently. They need one leadership team leading together.
Many principals spend hours planning the agenda for the opening staff meeting. They carefully organize announcements, policies, schedules, and presentations to ensure every important topic is covered.
Those details are important, but they aren’t the question that should drive your planning.
Instead, ask yourself, “What experience do I want my staff to have?”
How do you want teachers to feel as they leave that first meeting? Encouraged? Inspired? Valued? Confident? Hopeful?
The first days of school communicate far more than information. They communicate what your leadership values, how your staff will be treated, and whether this is a place where people feel supported and trusted. Every interaction, every conversation, and every decision contributes to that experience.
Great school cultures aren’t created by accident. They’re created intentionally by leaders who understand that people remember how they were led long after they’ve forgotten the details of the agenda.
One of the biggest lessons I learned as a principal was that my calendar would always reflect someone’s priorities. The question was whether they would be mine or everyone else’s.
Early in my leadership journey, I believed being available for everything was part of being a good principal. It didn’t take long before I realized my days were being filled with reacting instead of leading. I was solving immediate problems but spending very little time in classrooms, coaching teachers, or focusing on the instructional work that had the greatest impact on students.
Everything changed when I became intentional with my calendar.
Before the school year begins, block time for classroom walkthroughs, coaching conversations, leadership team meetings, and protected thinking time. If instructional leadership is truly a priority, your calendar should prove it. If building Relationships is important, create space for it before the demands of the school year begin competing for your attention.
Your calendar is more than a schedule. It’s one of the clearest reflections of your leadership priorities.
No school year begins perfectly.
A bus will arrive late. Technology will fail. Someone’s schedule won’t work. A frustrated parent will call. A teacher will need your support before first period even begins.
Those moments are inevitable.
What your staff will remember isn’t whether everything went according to plan. They’ll remember how you responded when it didn’t.
Over the past several months, I’ve spent a great deal of time thinking about one leadership habit that often gets overlooked: presence. Presence is choosing to be fully engaged in the moment instead of mentally living in the next one. During the opening weeks of school, your staff doesn’t need leaders who appear rushed, distracted, or overwhelmed. They need leaders who are visible in classrooms, present in conversations, calm during challenges, and intentional in every interaction.
Your presence becomes contagious. When leaders model calm, confidence, and intentionality, those qualities begin spreading throughout the building. That’s how culture is built—not through slogans or posters, but through the consistent daily actions of leaders who show up with purpose.
As the first day of school approaches, it’s natural to focus on everything that still needs to be done. Every principal has a list of tasks that feels longer than the time remaining to complete them. That’s part of the job, and those responsibilities deserve your attention.
Just don’t let those tasks distract you from the most important preparation you’ll do this summer.
The condition of your building matters, but the condition of your leadership matters even more. When you and your leadership team are aligned around clear priorities, intentional experiences, protected time, and a calm, consistent presence, you’re doing far more than preparing for opening day. You’re creating the conditions where teachers can do their very best work and students can thrive.
Because at the end of the day, schools aren’t transformed by buildings. They’re transformed by people.
And those people deserve leaders who have prepared themselves just as intentionally as they’ve prepared the school.
You aren’t preparing the building. You’re preparing yourself and your leadership team to lead the people who will make the building successful.
A Quick Note on Support for Your Students
As you think about building belief and alignment within your team, it’s also worth considering how your systems support students who need more.
One of the areas where I see teams struggle is academic intervention. The desire to help is there—but the time, staffing, and structure often aren’t.
That’s where partners like HeyTutor can make a real difference.
HeyTutor provides high-dosage tutoring in Math and ELA, both in-person and online, with trained tutors who integrate directly into your school systems. Their model is built around consistency, small-group support, and real-time data tracking—so your team can see Growth and adjust instruction along the way.
If you’re looking for ways to better support students without overwhelming your staff, it’s worth exploring what they offer HERE.
I partnered with HeyTutor to get this in front of you—working with brands I believe in is how I keep this content coming. #paidpartnership
When You’re Ready…
If you’re ready to stop reacting and start leading, here are a few ways I can support you:
