Authors: Teresa VanDover and Paul Hanna

Digital ISBN: 978-1-7359340-1-3

Paperback ISBN: 978-1-7377968-9-3

About The Authors:  

Paul Hanna has served as a college professor, principal, school district reading specialist, gifted program director, state education department program supervisor, and classroom teacher. Teaching children to read and guiding teachers to provide quality reading instruction have anchored his experience in every position in which he has served.

Dr. Hanna, presently semi-retired from Columbia College in Columbia, MO, continues to teach online classes in reading instruction, principal preparation, and curriculum. Preparing teachers for the profession and helping shape master teachers are enduring fervors, in which his varied experiences have culminated. 

Paul Hanna owes his enthusiasm for exemplary instruction to the many wonderful teachers upon whose shoulders he stands, including those who serve the National Urban Alliance, where he was a mentor. Instruction is at the heart of successful students, teachers, and principals, and those tenets have shaped the writing of this book.

About the Book:

The Inspirational Leader provides in-service principals, teacher leaders, and aspiring principals the necessary understanding and tools to manifest the Professional Standards of Educational Leaders (PSEL) in every aspect, interaction, relationship, and vision needed to ensure principals are creating schools worthy of saving. Schools are becoming less respected in American culture. Public schools are buffeted by dwindling resources, competition from “choice-based” options, lower socio-economic standards of constituents, changing family structures, and increased political expectations. Schools do not seem to be rising to these challenges. One reason for this is, there is precious little adherence to the PSEL standards; most principals would like to get there, but they do not have the model to guide them and are confused about where to start. This book proposes such a model and offers step-by-step, real-life examples, and guidelines to achieve the standards in a school that is truly inspirational.

The Inspirational Leader’s approach is to define the standards, utilizing real-world examples and providing tools to help the practitioner reach the goal of integrating all ten into one, over-arching road map that provides daily guidance. The purpose of creating this publication is to fill a void for practitioners. Even though much has been written about the theoretical construct of the standards (the work of Reginald Green comes to mind), precious little pragmatic examples exist, showing what the standards actually look like in the daily practice of the inspirational leader. Present and future principals across all contexts and venues, as well as teacher leaders, will be able to unpack and translate the standards and facilitate the entire school staff to work towards the common vision PSEL represents. The standards are mandated as a part of accreditation for principal preparation programs, and their intent is embedded in other statutes of the United States, such as Title IX, Civil Rights Legislation, and ADA, to name a few. This guide is needed, since one like it has never been written before.