Essential Skills for Effective School Leadership - Softcover

Siccone, Frank

9780131385191: Essential Skills for Effective School Leadership

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0131385194 ISBN 13: 9780131385191

Publisher: Pearson, 2020

A succinct, practicable text that equips school leaders with an expansive repertoire of essential skills and reinforces the leadership knowledge necessary for success.

All leaders, particularly school leaders, share five essential skills:

Confidence. Leaders believe in themselves and their ability to mobilize others to act.

Communication. Leaders are able to articulate their goals and transform words into deeds, and rhetoric into results.

Collaboration. Leaders recognize that success is a team effort.

Coaching. Leaders invest time and energy into developing their team.

Continuous Improvement. Leaders view change as opportunity.

This book is based on the premise that there is no single ideal school leader profile or leadership style. It contains tools for activating and motivating the community on behalf of students, developing the ability to be decisive and achieve results, facilitating collaboration to improve teaching and learning, implementing detailed action plans, and balancing leadership challenges.

Designed for individual school leaders and those who aspire to be, this book contains easy-to-understand, ready-to-use leadership lessons created to inspire the acquisition of pertinent decision-making and school leadership skills. A valuable resource for every reader, it is designed to be easily customizable. Topics that are most relevant to each situation are easily selected and tailored to every leader's individual development program.

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About the Author:

Frank Siccone Ed.D. is an educator, author, and organizational leadership consultant. For three decades he has been offering workshops to teachers and administrators throughout the country, and has conducted youth leadership training for students not only in the United States, but also from Russia, and South Africa.

Dr. Siccone has written a previous book on school leadership entitled, The Power To Lead: A Guide For School Administrators On Facilitating Change. His first book, 101 Ways to Develop Student Self-Esteem and Responsibility was co-authored with Jack Canfield (co-author of Chicken Soup for the Soul). His books have been translated into Chinese, Czech, Russian, and Spanish. He has taught classes and workshops at several colleges and universities including the California State University, East Bay and San Bernardino; San Francisco State University; University of California, Riverside; the University of San Francisco; and the Leadership Institute at Yale University.

In addition to his work in education, Frank has also consulted with an impressive list of corporate clients such as Cisco Systems, Hitachi, Intel, Pepsi Cola, Sprint, Sun Microsystems, and Walmart.com. Among the nonprofit organizations with whom he has worked recently are the California Association of Student Councils, The American Society of Plastic Surgeons, and Green For All.

Review:

This reader wishes that he had this text when he led the restructuring of his own school eight years ago. The author provided an excellent balance of research couple with practical hands-on resources for the practitioner seeking to lead school change and provide effective leadership.

The text is highly relevant for lead-teacher and administrator in-service programs. It is an "easy read" and provides highly practical contexts, hands-on materials for workshops and reflection for continuous improvement. Critically, the author provides us with a step-by- step guide that school leaders may institute to create an atmosphere supporting school improvement focused on ensuring that all children meet with success.

The format provided an excellent balance of research-based direct and clear leadership statements followed by excellent hands-on materials. This is an excellent tool-kit for effective leadership and organizational change.

Peter Osroff, Principal, Garden City Middle School, Garden City, New York

The proposed text would make a great book talk or PLC focus for administrators or as a supplemental text for a graduate class. Again, the author’s voice is very inviting and comfortable and you feel like he is in your corner as support and help.

Pamela M. VanHorn, Prinicipal, Kilbourne Middle School, Worthington, Ohio

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