[00:00:00]
Hey, everyone, and welcome to The Principal’s Handbook. Today, I am so excited to have our guest with us—Dr. Nick Davies, who was the 2024 Washington Assistant Principal of the Year. He’s going to be talking to us about leadership, really focusing on our wellbeing, and making sure that we’re prioritizing ourselves while also focusing on being good leaders. I think it’s going to be a great conversation for us today. I’m excited to have him on the podcast; he’s got a lot of great things to share.

I hope you get a few tips here that you find valuable and that you can start right now to disconnect from school and really focus on your own wellbeing so you can either do this job for the long run or enjoy it while you’re in this position now. Because it can be really hard to sustain the role of a principal if you’re not focusing on your wellbeing.

So, I hope you find the conversation with Dr. Nick Davies and myself helpful today and get a few things to take away.

Welcome to The Principal’s Handbook, [00:01:00] your go-to resource for principals looking to revamp their leadership approach and prioritize self-care. I’m Barb Flowers, a certified life coach with eight years of experience as an elementary principal. Tune in each week as we delve into strategies for boosting mental resilience, managing time effectively, and nurturing overall wellness.

From tackling daily challenges to maintaining a healthy work-life balance, I’m Barb Flowers, and we’ll navigate the complexities of school leadership together. Join me in fostering your sense of purpose as a principal and reigniting your passion for the job. Welcome to a podcast where your wellbeing is the top priority.

We have Nick Davies here, and he is an elementary assistant principal who’s going to talk to us today. We’re going to be talking about disconnecting from our jobs, focusing on our wellbeing, and really just helping so that you can prevent or even overcome burnout. This is going to be a great topic that I’m excited about today on the podcast.

Thank you, Nick, so much for being here.

[00:02:00]
Thank you so much for having me. I love being invited to things like this, and it’s great to just share what I’ve learned and learn from others like you in this journey.

Yeah. So, we both are passionate about talking about wellbeing for principals. I think this is such an important topic because, especially as we’re recording, we’re—right—we’re both elementary people. It’s right before Halloween, so it can get pretty crazy. I always felt like October was one of the craziest months. I don’t know why that was, but our discipline was always the highest. Kids settle in, the honeymoon’s over, and it’s stressful for principals, right? You have this expectation of what this year’s going to look like, and now reality sits in.

So, what tips or advice do you have for principals who are just in October and they’re just like feeling done? Like, “I can’t even go to work tomorrow. I’m so tired. I’m feeling burnt out. I don’t know if I can keep doing this.”

[00:03:00]
Yeah. Great, great question. And in the elementary world, right? We all know that October 31st and November 1st, if you have school on those days, they’re always another level—kids too hopped up on sugar or too tired from being out all night. So we’re coming up on that soon.

But I’d say there are two pieces I always focus on to answer that question about when we’re feeling burned out, when things are really tough. What do principals need to focus on? I think two areas: one is our day job and how do we get the most return on our time, and the other is how do we disconnect, as you said, and just be ourselves outside of school. We can’t always be, you know, Dr. Flowers or Dr. Davies. We need to be able to take a step back, relax, decompress.

[00:04:00]
So, the at-work piece—this can take a while; both sides can take a while really to get into a good groove—but this idea of getting a good return on your time. As a principal, we can get so sucked into the urgent: behavior issues, staff issues. I feel like adult issues take almost as much time as student issues. It’s the urgent tasks, the urgent things that come up, and the people who walk into your door.

So coming up with strong systems so you can be clear on your priorities is key. The Wallace Foundation has talked a lot about what clear principal priorities should be, and those revolve around climate and culture, collaboration with PLCs and teachers, being an instructional leader and leading instructional conversations with teachers, and managing resources.

If those are the four buckets to focus on, how do we do that?

One thing we’re really focusing on at Ogden Elementary is our behavior systems because we do unfortunately have some behavior issues. We’ve spent a ton of time being proactive—meaning we’ve set clear expectations. Every day in the morning announcements, we review some sort of expectation in the building or on the playground, like what the games and the game rules are in the hallways and classroom, over and over.

So when kids break an expectation or show unexpected behavior, we go back to that. We call families, and we are ultra-consistent in how we respond to things.

[00:05:00]
This year we’re taking a different focus with hyper-consistency, which is time-consuming for the AP and another staff member who supports me, but it’s slowly allowing me to focus on some of the instructional pieces. I’ve done a bunch of observations the last two weeks because now we’re starting to see kids falling in line with the schoolwide expectations.

So getting clear on your priorities and trying to figure out what systems you can put in place so you can focus on the important tasks, not just the urgent ones—that’s one piece of it.

Another big part of that is empowering others in our building. We as school leaders cannot do everything. Who in your building can you empower? Who could really help you out? There might be a teacher who would love to take on additional responsibilities—maybe they want to be an admin someday or maybe they never want to leave the classroom but want to be known as a teacher leader.

Having those conversations with staff and delegating some tasks—not all, of course. There are things only principals can do, but there are plenty of things that don’t have to be done by the principal.

[00:06:00]
I met with a group of assistant principals a couple of weeks ago from across the state of Washington, and one of them was telling me he’s the go-to tech guy in his building. That’s great if it fills your bucket, but if it doesn’t, the principal or assistant principal should not be the go-to tech person. That should be the teacher librarian, an actual tech person, or somebody else because that’s a task someone else could be doing.

Mark Schellinger, who runs the national SAMS innovation project, has tons of examples of systems principals can put in place to delegate and empower others. It’s pretty cool.

Another thing that comes to mind is how people come to you thinking something is urgent when it’s so different from what you think is urgent. I remember I had kids waiting in my office, and I asked what they did. They said, “We told kids there wasn’t a Santa Claus.” I said, “No, really? What did you do?” That was the urgent emergency. What people think is urgent is so different.

So we try to appropriately validate teachers’ concerns but also coach them about how to triage issues in the building. What should be a teacher response, what should be a principal response, and when should they call for support?

[00:07:00]
We work with teachers one-on-one if we feel like they’re sending kids too often. We talk about when we think they should call. If it’s all the time, then we coach them on what we need to set up in their classroom so they don’t feel they have to have an adult all the time. Because that takes power away from the teacher, which is disempowering.

Kids just wait until the principal shows up, then they start listening.

So, that was getting return on your time. There’s a lot more we could dive into on that in way more detail. Like I said, I met with assistant principals across Washington for about three hours talking about what I’m summarizing now.

That’s the first piece: getting the best return on your time as a school leader.

The other half is finding balance or harmony in your life.

[00:08:00]
One of the most powerful tools I’ve done is an alignment activity—finding alignment between your values, goals, and passions.

The short version is: write down your core values. If you haven’t done that before, Brene Brown has great examples on how to find your core values—those ideals that stick with you. Mine are family, integrity, and health.

So in one column, write your core values. In the next column, write your professional goals: Do I want to run my own building? Run a district? Other things I want to accomplish as a school leader. Also write any personal goals.

Then in the last column, write your passions. For me, I’m passionate about my family, which matches well. I’m passionate about school leadership—I didn’t realize that until I left the classroom—that this is my jam. I love leading buildings and talking about leadership like we’re doing now. I also love exercising, being outdoors, riding my bike, jogging—those things are my passions.

[00:09:00]
The activity is: can you draw a line between your core values, goals, and passions? If you can, it’s easier to wake up every morning and get after it because it feeds your soul.

For years when I started as an admin, I wanted to be a really young superintendent. I got my PhD pretty young and was on that fast track.

Then I sat down and did this activity and realized if family is my top value, climbing the education leadership ladder isn’t aligned with how I view being a husband and father. It involves a lot of time.

If I want to spend all my time at school and all my time at sporting events (I was an athletic director for a while), that might get me there, but my kids are only their age for so long.

It’s easier to go to work knowing that goal can wait until my daughter is out of high school, which won’t be that long. I’ll have lots of time in my career later.

That’s part of finding alignment. Are you in alignment? If not, that might be part of why you’re burned out—you’re not serving your why.

[00:10:00]
I also think about what you’re doing in your role that you’re passionate about. As a principal, I wanted to climb the ladder and be a curriculum director. I was lucky to work in a district where the curriculum director was a high school person who asked me to help with elementary, which fed that passion.

So it wasn’t just discipline and things I didn’t enjoy—it was also doing things I was passionate about.

That’s an excellent point because it helps us feel better about what we’re doing. Do we have things we really care about as part of our daily jobs?

Two other pieces of finding that ideal balance or harmony in life are: being present, and taking care of yourself.

For me, developing a mindfulness practice was key.

The research is clear that mindfulness reduces stress and helps us regulate emotions better. The last thing we want is to come up to an escalated student and become escalated ourselves.

Mindfulness helps us make better decisions, be more reflective, and the list of benefits goes on.

It also helps physically—being present in a distracted world, with phones, emails, people walking in, radios—so many distractions stealing our attention.

Being present helps us train our minds to focus on one task at a time. Research shows we’re bad multitaskers; focusing on one task means we finish faster, hopefully leaving work early and going home to be present with whatever we’re doing.

[00:12:00]
Developing some mindfulness practice—whether short meditation, focusing on breath, or mindfully eating—is beneficial.

As a principal, maybe take five minutes, don’t aim for a 30-minute lunch. Close your door, turn your radio low, and just eat.

Or walk, or other ways. You can even incorporate mindfulness into your daily job and get benefits while working.

The last piece is taking care of yourself.

I’ve talked to many principals who are already on leave for health issues, and we’re at the beginning of the school year.

Taking care of ourselves means we need to exercise, eat well, and at least the principals I know need to drink less alcohol. It seems to be the culture of the position.

And sleep. There’s no way around it.

I used to cut sleep first, saying, “I’ve got too much to do, so I’ll go to bed later and get up earlier.” That’s so detrimental to health, joy, and even getting work done efficiently.

We have to make sleep a priority, which has been a huge focus of mine this year.

[00:14:00]
Funny enough, I read an article when working on my dissertation about alcoholism and principals. It wasn’t about work functioning but about going home, pouring a glass of wine, then a bottle, to cope with the stress.

Before you know it, you’re drinking way more than average to handle the pressures of the job.

I found that fascinating because if you don’t focus on your health and wellbeing, it can easily happen.

Oh yeah, I could totally see that.

I read an article from 2016 comparing stress levels of principals and emergency room physicians, saying they’re on par with each other. Our jobs haven’t gotten easier in eight years.

That’s a telling stat—the jobs are stressful and challenging.

And I think you hit a great point—we underestimate the importance of sleep, exercise, and healthy eating. These things fuel us to feel better.

I just did an interview with a principal health coach talking about how administrators often gain weight and their health goes to the wayside if they don’t prioritize it.

So it’s so important.

[00:15:00]
Going back to Wallace Foundation research: the longer principals have been in their jobs, the more likely they are to be successful. Of course, there are young principals who do well and veterans who don’t, but generally, longer tenure leads to more success.

Right now, especially in Washington, the University of Washington released a report last year saying principal turnover is as high as it’s ever been.

They worry: with such high turnover, will we be able to replace everyone?

If we don’t do something, there will be serious consequences.

We need to take care of ourselves to be here for the long run.

Our jobs matter—we have the most important jobs in schools. I have no problem saying that to principals or teachers: our jobs matter, and we need to be at our best every day for the kids who deserve it.

[00:16:00]
And I think along with principal wellbeing, I’m super passionate about teacher wellbeing. As principals, we set the tone. If we’re not taking care of ourselves, not healthy, lacking good boundaries, and not modeling work-life balance, it’s hard for teachers to do that.

That leads to teacher burnout and retention problems.

A principal who focuses on wellbeing, balance, priorities, and alignment is so important for modeling that for staff.

Yeah, I love that. Just be the example.

It’s that principal who tells staff to go home and then spends the evening catching up on emails.

When teachers wake up, they have five emails from the principal sent at 11 or 12 at night.

Even if there’s no expectation to work that late, it sends the message that it’s okay.

I always say schedule send. It’s amazing—you can still work but no one knows. That’s a way to be an example.

Totally agree. You want to show staff.

My superintendent, who I worked with, I’ve never met anyone so good at disconnecting.

He’d literally walk out and say, “I’m done.” He never emailed us after school. If he called me, I knew it was an emergency.

That set such a great example of how it can be as a principal and how I can model that for my staff.

So as school leaders, it’s important to set that example.

[00:18:00]
Any last thoughts for our listeners, Nick?

No, I’ve talked about this in more detail elsewhere. Edutopia published an article of mine called something like “Achieving Balance as a Time-Starved School Leader.” It goes into more detail.

If anyone’s interested in learning more or if your school or district could benefit, I ran a training like this for hours with assistant principals and had a great time.

Reach out—you can find me at drnickdavies.com or shoot me an email at drnickdavies@gmail.com. I’d love to connect.

You also have a podcast people can find you on?

Yeah, it was weekly, but I realized I needed to lean into my core values and spend more time with my kids and less interviewing, so it dropped to about once or twice a month.

It’s Monday Mornings with Dr. Nick: Authentic Leadership in Action.

We dive in short, mostly 10-15 minutes on leadership highlights. I like it—a lot about principal and leader wellbeing.

Awesome.

Well, thank you so much for being here today, Nick. Lots of great tips and information listeners can take away.

We appreciate it. Thank you so much.

Mhm. [00:20:00]