I have heard a lot of reasons why leaders don’t get into classrooms.

• “I have too many other commitments to take care of during the day.”
• “I’m constantly putting out fires, such as student behaviors.”
• “I will schedule classroom visits, but something constantly comes up.”

As a former principal for sixteen years, I get it. I have made comments like these at times. I wasn’t making excuses. This can be the reality for many leaders.

But I also know many leaders almost always find time for the following:

• Supervising lunch and recess
• Greeting students and families at the front doors in the morning
• Checking and replying to email messages several times a day

I am not saying leaders should stop doing these things. Responding to student behavior situations and other urgent matters is part of the job.

What I am conveying is, anything can be a priority if we have the commitment and the systems to make it so.

Prioritizing the urgent over the important doesn’t have to your current reality. No, we can’t simply shrug off our responsibilities when the urgent comes up. But we can be more proactive in how we determine what the response to these issues are, as well as who should be responding.

We do this by empowering others to manage and lead in common situations.

For example, you are in your office, ready to visit classrooms as scheduled on your calendar. As you walk out, in walks Michael. Michael is what you would refer to as a “frequent flyer”: constantly sent to the office for negative behaviors. Your typical response is as follows:

1. Turn around.
2. Invite Michael into your office.
3. Spend the next hour unpacking what happened: listen to Michael’s story, speak with the staff member who sent him down, investigate the situation, make a decision about consequences, call his parents, and enter all this information in the behavior documentation form.

My question for you is, whose agenda are you following: Michael’s or yours?

We can’t blame Michael. What we can do is create a system where the Michaels of our world aren’t always capturing our time and attention away from instructional leadership work.