Independent school Heads have been living in the eye of a hurricane for the last two weeks as they marshal collective efforts of patience, grace and technica...

Only two weeks ago, I had sketched out a piece on the retention efforts that independent schools should make during the spring and summer. The lede: Just b...

If you've been in a classroom that employs Responsive Classroom practice, you know that Morning Meeting always begins with a greeting, a moment for every mem...

If only it were champagne. Instead: enrollment and employment. Late winter and early spring find independent schools heads playing tense games of chance a...

Each year on the first day of practice, my high school football coach would use the Fram oil filter slogan to signal the end of summer dissolution and to cal...

Al Adams' piece in the 2010 fall issue of Independent School magazine, Thirty-One Windows: the Evolving Metaphors for Headship, is one that I re-read at leas...

As a Head, the All Star Break always signaled the heart of summer for me, a time to look forward to the arrival of faculty and kids and to look back and refl...

The relationship between the independent school Head and the Board is enormously complex and full of seeming paradoxes. For instance, the Board is the Head'...

Summer has arrived on independent school campuses. Summer Camp is underway, and the facilities folks are sweeping into project mode. The final Board meetin...

For many years, long before I arrived and to this day, the sixth graders at Forsyth School, where I was the Head from 2007 – 2017, map the world from memory ...

Like the Simpsons, most independent schools have outwardly friendly but demanding neighbors. Depending on your neighborhood, those relationships can be rela...

The view from the first few days of the new year is smashing, nothing but upside, rainbows and unicorns. . . . until you sit down with the budget the Board j...

You've got bad news to relate that will resonate across the entire school community : the school must sell several acres of campus to make ends meet; the he...

For many years, I've been fermenting a workshop for heads on managing the sunny chaos that is the last month of the school year. That workshop has remained...

Hiring is the Head's most important task. Independent schools have been excellent for many years because we hire great teachers and give them breath-taking ...

You've conducted a long, successful head search, offering multiple opportunities for all of the school's constituencies to participate in the process, and, t...