The time has come where I am ready to move into a new role. I currently serve my district as a high school mathematics instructional coach. I have done this for the past four years, and it has been the most rewarding experience of my career. Of course, educating children was extremely rewarding, but getting to learn deeply about best instructional practices, professional learning communities, and how to work with adults over the last four years has been a whole experience in and of itself. That said, I am feeling the itch to move into an assistant principal position that marries the best of both worlds: students and teachers.
Recently, I have started to apply for open assistant principal positions for the coming school year, and here are three things I have learned so far.
Have Your Resume Ready
Clean up your resume so that it is “skimmable,” pertains to the job you want, and is free of typos and grammatical errors. You only have a few seconds to catch the interviewer’s eye with your resume, and clutter, typos, or grammatical errors will get you thrown into the wrong stack immediately.
Answer Questions With The Assistant Principal Hat On
People don’t want to hear about how great you are in your current role. They want to know what would make you a great fit for the position you are applying for. Answer all questions on the application (and eventually in the interview) with your assistant principal hat on. How do your current skills make you a great fit for the assistant principalship?
Reach out to the Campus Principal
I recently sent a quick introduction email to the principals of each campus I am applying to. In those emails, I also included my resume, so they could quickly review my experience. Every principal I reached out to responded to my email, and several offered to set up meetings to discuss my plans for the future. Whether this gets me an assistant principal interview or not, who knows, but at least they were made aware of how excited I am to be applying.
Here’s a blurb of what I said in my email:
Hi, XYZ!
I hope the year is off to a great start! I just wanted to let you know I applied for the assistant principal pool. If you have any openings next year, I would love to be considered if I end up in the pool. Attached is my resume.
Thanks!
I hope this helps as you start your journey! I will be continuing to put out more posts as the journey continues. Stay tuned!
Update: Here is the follow-up to this article.
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