(Almost) everything you'll ever need to know: a former principal, superintendent and education professor with decades of experience under his belt offers a concise guide to school leadership.

As a professor in the administrative services credential program at California State University, Stanislaus, I helped scores of teachers become principals. I also was a teacher, principal, director of research and superintendent (Hillsborough City, 1967-1972, and Lincoln Unified, 1972-1990). The following gems from this experience can help guide our school leadership.

1. Be a servant leader. As the principal, your responsibility is to provide leadership, organization and management to enable all staff members to function at their best level. Your raison d'etre is to provide service to others.

2. Listen! Listen! Listen! Give your full attention to the questions, testimony, dreams, ambitions, expectations and comments of all school stakeholders. Learn to be an active listener. Listening advances learning.

3. Visualize your ideal school culture and work toward it. Keep your actions, modeling and reinforcing focused on moving your culture from where it is to where you want to be. Focus your efforts on the vital elements of your desired culture: respect for self, respect for others, responsibility for your actions. Focus on academic growth, punctuality, completing homework, professional confidentiality, collaboration and collegiality. Align awards/recognition with desired culture. Celebrate the achievements of staff --both certificated and classified--our partners committed to serving students.

4. Set goals and priorities each year. Develop goals and set priorities with stakeholders. Publicize your progress and achievement. All activities should be related to the school's mission and goals. In the absence of goals, anything can become an issue. You cannot determine success if you don't have a target.

5. Involve others in decision making. Enlist those with both interest and expertise into your decision-making process. Use the strengths of your staff. Collaborative decision making enhances ownership and usually results in better decisions.

6. Keep those affected by your actions informed. Whatever school changes you are contemplating, be sure to respect your colleagues by keeping them informed of conditions, reasons and procedures of possible moves that may affect them. Living "no surprises" builds a respectful, collegial culture. Your staff deserves to hear it from you, not from a third party.

7. Maintain your curriculum/teaching skills. As principal, your professional experience includes teaching expertise. Don't lose it. Keep up in your field (mathematics, language arts, science, history/social science) with teaching lessons, substituting, attending conferences, reading journals and meeting with teachers.

8. Do classroom rounds daily. Spend time each day in several classroom visits. Focus on standards being taught. Read Kim Marshall's June 2005 article in Phi Delta Kappan, and apply to your practice

9. Feedback! Feedback! Feedback! Support teachers' professional practice with specific and timely feedback.

10. Due process! Due process! Due process! All of us (teachers, students, parents--even superintendents) are entitled to give their side of issues and events.

11. Live with data. Gather, study and collaboratively review data in status reports on reading achievement, standards acquisition, attendance, student behavior and school-culture-building incidents as well as budget matters.

12. Be a professional--read your journals. Read ASCD's Educational Leadership, ACSA's Leadership, Phi Delta Kappan and your teaching field's curriculum association journal. Refer staff to key articles. Place your journals in Faculty workroom for faculty access. Cite and use published materials about quality practices in discussions on teaching and learning in your school.

13. Build and maintain your professional network. Share your practice with colleagues in other schools and districts and, in turn, learn from them. Your professional associations (ACSA, ASCD, PDK, NASSP or NAESP, etc.) are important to you, your school and your district. We can improve our students' learning with ideas from colleagues in other schools, districts, county offices, state departments, university researchers and professional associations. Going it alone is foolhardy.

Tod Anton, a professor in the administrative services credential program at California State University, Stanislaus from 1990-2004, is a former teacher, principal, director of research and superintendent. Anton received ACSA's Robert E. Kelly Award in 1999.