Dealing with learning is part of your job. Is teaching part of it as well?

Many people knock on your office door, often in need of guidance, advice, and answers. If there is an issue, more often than not, you will be cleaning it up. You are responsible for the organization of the school. You want to have good results. You manage a school, so whatever you do has a huge impact on teaching and learning.

There are several hidden or visible debates concerning teaching at school. For example, is teaching the sacred event that happens in the classrooms exclusively the realm of teachers and learners? Are there any common links between different subjects, especially those that deal with science, value-oriented or physical education? Is there a connection between the work that occurs in the classroom, in the lab or in the schoolyard? Shouldn’t the school principal rather deal with his or her administrative work and leave teaching to the specialists?

Regardless of the fact that almost worldwide, school laws and regulations demand lively democratic teaching goals, despite the evolution of pedagogy and didactics that describes the path from authoritarian teaching to cooperative learning, in today’s schools, one can find all varieties of teaching practices, ranging from believing that teaching is a transmission of knowledge to accepting that it is a multifactor process.

However, if democracy is to be taught, it must not only be cognitively known, but also tried and experienced. Thus, teaching time, which comprises most of the time spent in school, is an essential agent, and the role of the principal in that effort is be crucial.