Inexperienced

This week I have been away from school at the annual NC School Administrator's conference. This conference gives administrators a chance to learn from each other, hear from some great speakers and also to network and talk with everyone outside of a principal's meeting or state meeting. Inevitably, you start swapping stories with people about crazy things that happen in schools. Sharing these stories this year started to make me realize that I am at the point where I can probably call myself experienced in my role. That's a strange feeling for me. I started as an assistant principal at 26 years old. I was a head principal for the first time at 29. At that age, it's tough to say that I was experienced in anything related to my career. At that time, I found myself frustrated by how young I was and how I sometimes felt alienated by my age. My dad often reassured me that no one takes you seriously until you are 40. So according to him, I'm still not experienced yet I guess.

At our conference, we heard from Steve Ventura on the topic of student-centered leadership. One of his statements quickly caught my attention. The statement was, "Experience doesn't count for expertise." That statement is probably not the way that we think of education. We often equate experience in the classroom with expertise. Those teachers and administrators that have been around the longest, certainly most have seen it all and they must know what to do. But the problem is that schools today are not the schools of just a few years ago. The experience of what may have worked a while back could very well be useless with today's students, classrooms, environments, curriculums, assessments and everything else. That's precisely why we have to become lifelong learners in this profession.

The one thing that my lack of experience taught me was that I had to work hard to prove myself and to do that, I had to learn what I was talking about. Every year we see this with beginning teachers and experienced ones that step out on a limb and try something new. That lack of experience causes them to learn and those that put in the work, gain expertise. So whether this is your 1st or 31st year in your roll, attack it with the same attitude of wanting desperately to become an expert in your field. It's the learning, not the time that gets you there.