Roundtable: Experiencing Joy in School Leadership

In the challenging yet incredibly rewarding world of school leadership, it’s important to find joy in the work, not just for your students and staff but for yourself. To learn what makes school leaders joyful and how they share joy with their school communities, Principal Leadership contacted Todd Dain, EdD, the principal of Shawnee Mission South High School in Overland Park, KS, and the 2023 Kansas Principal of the Year; Denisha Moodley, EdD, the principal of Pecos Middle School in Pecos, NM, and the 2023 New Mexico Principal of the Year; and Kimberly Winterbottom, the principal of Arundel High School in Glen Burnie, MD, and the former principal of Marley Middle School in Glen Burnie, MD, the 2023 Maryland Principal of the Year, and a 2024 National Principal of the Year finalist.

Principal Leadership: Does joy play a role in school leadership, and if so, how?

Dain: I would say that joy starts with our “why.” For us, our why is our students. We love all students. We show up every day for young people. I relish the opportunity to connect with young people and to see our teachers building those relationships with them. That’s where the impact is, and that’s what drives me. I’ve had some opportunities to move on from the building and go to the district level. But I don’t want to leave kids because that’s what gives me joy.

Winterbottom: Like Todd said, it starts with students. I would also say that right up there with students, we all must work with a dynamic staff, some who are experienced and others who are not. The joy that I find after student success comes from working with staff and especially the teachers and helping them find joy. They’re the front lines, working with students daily. I revel in helping them find solutions. Whether it’s a teacher who’s struggling with classroom management, whether it’s an assistant principal who is struggling with organization, that’s where I find a lot of my joy, helping to solve the myriad challenges that occur in any given school day, week, or year.

Moodley: For me, effective leadership needs joy because effective leaders are looking to make dynamic change. When we just view our job as a chore and there isn’t joy in it, the likelihood of us taking the initiative to make dynamic change is very low. Effective leaders face challenges and rise above those challenges. Neurologically, we know whenever we experience a challenge or a hardship, our neurons release neurochemicals that cause anxiety and stress. We need to tap into our joy, so those neurochemicals shift to becoming positive ones. That shift causes resilience, another important part of effective leadership.

Principal Leadership: What brings you joy as a school leader?

Winterbottom: That there’s always a challenge that presents itself. A leader’s role is to work through those challenges and to celebrate the successes. Whether it’s checking on a teacher that’s had something traumatic going on outside of the building and just letting them know that you’re aware and that you’re there to support them or whether it’s a student who maybe isn’t a highflier in one way or the other and letting them know, “Hey, I like your sweatshirt today,” and seeing them smile. It starts with us from the top down. We model that. That is a huge part of creating a positive school culture. Because the jobs that we do and that the teachers and all staff do in a school building are not easy.

Dain: I appreciate that Kim brought up culture. Seeing students exceed their expectations and fulfill their potential is what brings me joy. At our school, we’ve created a principal’s cabinet. We call them “Culture Keepers” because they really drive the expectations in our building for culture and celebrations. They’ve crafted ideas for celebrating student of the week based on nominations from their peers for acts of kindness. We also have opportunities to celebrate our staff. Those celebrations don’t come from me. They come from other staff members. They select a “Hard Hat Hero” of the week and a monthly teacher “Champion of Culture.” One teacher chooses another teacher to recognize them in front of the staff to talk about how they positively impact our culture. When I see teachers recognizing their peers that’s pure joy.

Moodley: As Todd mentioned, a lot of our joy is rooted in our why. I grew up in post-apartheid South Africa. I saw how an older generation was deprived of education and their quality of life was diminished because of that. I also witnessed the younger generation, my cousins and their kids, take advantage of their right to education and close those gaps that existed, move into sustainable housing and pursue jobs that allowed them to have good health care. So, education is very important to me because of the impact it has on completely changing lives for the better. In our school, joy for me is learning about how our work as a team is impacting kids. How we’re sending first-generation students to college. How we’re sending first-generation students out into the real world to become first-time home buyers. Two years ago, a former student reached out to say my faculty and staff did an awesome job teaching him. He let us know he was the first male in his family to live past 23 years old. Those cycles that we’re able to break mean a lot to me and bring me a lot of joy.

Principal Leadership: How do you plan to choose joy in your work this school year?

Winterbottom: There’s not a prescription for what we do. There’s research and effective methods to rely on, but every year brings a new set of students, teachers, challenges, obstacles, and successes. That’s the novelty. What’s exciting is seeing the changes and hopefully successes of the students you know from previous years. In our school, I have students in sixth, seventh, and eighth grades and 99% of them stay with us. They mature, start making better choices, and become more successful academically. I find joy in watching students grow and succeed, and in supporting teachers as they develop their skill set and find their footing. I also want to say a big piece of feeling joyful is in taking care of ourselves. We must realize that everything can’t be job related. We must have outlets, recognize that our self-care is not tied to our job, and find that balance.

Dain: We must choose joy every day. And sometimes that’s hard. But connecting with great leaders like Denisha and Kim across the state and across the country can help. Every time I have an opportunity to connect and network and learn from other great leaders, I always gain something, whether it’s a strategy or just encouragement.

Moodley: In recent years, we’ve focused on sharing joy and resources with our students’ families. One of the resources we use is parentguidance.org, which offers many grants for schools. They provide virtual parent coaching for families, which in a small area like ours is very popular because people don’t want to tell their business to our local psychologists. They also have monthly seminars for parents, and they have all types of intercultural and intergenerational activities, which are important for our grandparents who are serving as parents of our students. Our students’ family members live in our isolated rural community, where it can be difficult to engage in joyful activity. There’s no socialization, no recreational opportunities here. Our goal is to seek out sponsors from our community partners and transport our families to surrounding areas like Albuquerque and Santa Fe so they can engage in a bowling night or a social event in the community, so they can experience joy and build resilience and work through their trauma. We have grandparents who still remember being suspended for speaking Spanish in school. We have parents who graduated in the early 2000s who remember being discriminated against because they were the children of migrant workers. Our efforts are not just to instill joy but to address trauma that exists specifically between our communities and the public education system here in New Mexico.

Principal Leadership: Can you share an especially joyful time in your career as a principal?

Winterbottom: In January, I had an opportunity through NASSP to visit Guatemala on a Lifetouch Memory Mission to help build a school. It was just amazing. We met students, families, principals, and teachers. We discussed similarities and differences in our education systems and experiences. It was life-changing and has impacted my leadership.

Dain: Last December, one of our sister schools in our district had an incident where a white male student used a racial slur and assaulted a black female student in school. It was a tragic situation that impacted our kids. The leader of our school’s Black Student Union came to me and said we need to do something about what happened at that school. His name is Ace. He’s a great kid. He shared how students wanted to share their voices, so we organized an opportunity for them to do a walk out to our football stadium. About 1,600 students attend our school, and that day over 1,200 students walked out to the stadium. The students had made signs and Ace spoke into a microphone and talked about how we need to support everyone and we’re not going to choose hate. He was just so appropriate. After 15 minutes, he announced that it was time for everyone to go back to class. And 1,200 students did an about-face and walked out of the stadium and right back into the classroom. As everyone was walking back into class, Ace gave me this big hug. I told him I was proud of him. He checked his phone, and several news stations were emailing him to interview him. They had parked across the street from our school. He asked if he could talk to them, and I said of course (his mom had signed a media release form earlier in the year). Then he said, “Dr. Dain will you go with me?” and I did. That was maybe one of the best moments for me. Because what could have been a really difficult situation became a great success for all our kids and a great message for our community.

Moodley: About two years ago, we experienced the Hermit’s Peak Fire in New Mexico. I live an hour away from the community I serve, and the fire ended up literally in my backyard. We got a text message around 4 p.m. to evacuate by 6 p.m. on a Friday. I got home and all the fire evacuation centers in a one-hour radius were already filled. The governor then opened the state parks. That was the only option my family had on such short notice. We moved about an hour and a half away to a state park and set up camp there. When I checked my phone, I was just showered with messages from parents, students, and employees. They wanted to know how they could help. On Monday, when I showed up to school, I noticed so many cars. I was super anxious. I thought something was wrong. But all these parents showed up to bring me just tons of bottled water and canned goods for my family. These are individuals who I know struggle to have those things for themselves. For them to be able to sacrifice that for me, I was just overwhelmed with joy and gratitude.

Principal Leadership: How do you model feeling joyful at school for your students and staff?

Winterbottom: I learned early on as an educator that everything that leaders say and do is heard and observed. A simple example is I used to pass one leader in the hallway 10 times a day and they’d only say hi once. Another leader who I also passed 10 times a day would always say hello every single time. I’m like the latter. Making sure that everyone knows they’re seen and heard is my top priority. On the opposite end of that, we as leaders are not perfect and we make mistakes. We must own up to those, and I think that also equally impacts a positive school culture.

Dain: Enthusiasm is contagious. As leaders, we set the tone for that enthusiasm from day one when we’re welcoming students into the building. I learned a long time ago that there’s leadership by walking around and just being visible. My first year as a principal—10 years ago—students came up to me and asked who I was. When I told them I was the new principal, they asked what I was doing in the hallway. I explained that I’m in the hallway every passing period. That’s how I do business. They said they’d never seen the principal in the hallway. Just little things like that show your joy in serving your school community.

Moodley: When I was in my second year of teaching in North Carolina, there was a seventh grader at my school who was going through a hard time. I lived near her, and one morning we walked to school together. She had a rough night. There was a program at our school that was supposed to promote joy. Teachers wore an apron with Velcro patches that students could choose to pull off and there would be a funny phrase the teacher would say. For example, if there was an Elvis patch, the teacher would say “Thank you, thank you very much” just like Elvis to lighten the mood. When I walked the student to her classroom, the teacher wearing the apron greeted the student. But the student refused to pick a patch. I knew why but the teacher didn’t. The teacher gave the student a sticker and told her, “We only want positive vibes at this school.” That upset the student even more. At the time, I didn’t know the teacher’s approach was what today we call toxic positivity. That’s where we push joy to a point where we’re forcing kids to ignore or invalidate their trauma and hardship. We know that to be resilient and tap into our joy, we have to acknowledge those hardships. I’m just very intentional about creating authentic opportunities for joy and acknowledging when a student is not in a joyful mood. I am intentional about not forcing them to experience joy but sitting through the process with them, being there for them, saying we’re going to work through this and that I know that what they’re going through is hard. Those authentic interactions can pave the way for establishing a genuine sense of joy for our students.