Principles for Princi-PALS and Teachers! One Principal’s Mind-Staggering Insight into Students’ Hope-Filled Futures

The missing link to an unsuccessful, stagnant school is a need for the ability to leverage influential leadership and teaching practices. In "Principles for Princi-Pals -- and Teachers," presented in two parts, the author offers insight into leveraging influential leadership and teaching practices.
Part One offers a practical platform for principals and teachers who remain committed to reflecting on their beliefs and increasing their skills, strategies, and practices to establish and maintain highly effective school settings where ALL students continuously thrive at consistently elevated levels. To help educators meet the challenge, the author shares what he calls first principles intended to be a catalyst that will spark courageous conversations and ignite action among aspiring principals, current principals, master principals, aspiring teachers, first-year teachers, and master teachers. They are helpful for all educators who are up to the challenge of building more robust, inclusive school cultures. These first principles help shield educators from the influence of the ever-evolving ills of society and the world on the challenge schools face in educating students. At the end of each chapter in Part One, principals/school leaders and teachers, respectively, are provided a framework to reflect on the principles and apply their leadership and teaching perspective to their work settings.
Part Two gives real-life applications of these first principles in the daily operation of schools and classrooms. Drawing on his experience, the author offers insight into practical strategies for increasing the skills and competencies necessary to ensure a thriving, working school environment.
Rather than a competing product, this book is a companion tool to all books on educational leadership, focusing on improving leadership and teaching practices that influence student learning. The book keeps educators focused on the essential characteristics that defined their initial excitement and enthusiasm, their dedicated commitment to serving students at all costs, and their determination to succeed as influential educational leaders and teachers. It keeps them focused on their initial Vision of Service to ALL students.

Dr. Noah L. Riley is a 'refired' retired school Principal and educational strategist. He has building-level administrative experience as Instructional Leader, Change Agent, and Turn-Around Principal in low-performing and high-ability suburban, urban, and inner-city schools. He has K-12 teaching experience and has served students as a principal in Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, and Missouri. As an Educational Strategist, he has dedicated his professional career to developing and improving strategies to ameliorate the adverse effects of poor principal and teacher practices on students. He has a heart for those inappropriately labeled as 'at-risk,' marginalized, struggling, reluctant, and precocious learners. He has professional educator licenses & endorsements in General Administrative (K-12); General Supervisory (K-12); Secondary Education (6-12), and Superintendent (Pre-K – 12).
He has facilitated, implemented, directed, coordinated, and supervised five standards-aligned instructional and assessment programs simultaneously in 6th - 12th grade. At the end of his tenure as a principal, his school had consistently been the highest academically achieving high school in the school corporation on the State graduation qualifying assessments and maintained an average 90%+ graduation rate. He credits the school's success to the staff and faculty's unique caring and inclusive culture in their ability to go beyond academics and arts to instill life principles in their students. U.S. News & World Report listed the school as one of America's Best High Schools. Also, during his tenure, he was the only principal of a high school in the school corporation/district to graduate Gates Millennium Scholars. He also is an ordained Elder at Christian Tabernacle Church in Chicago, Illinois.
Riley has been published in the Illinois ASCD Quarterly Journal. He has presented at the National Alliance of Black School Educators Conference, the Raising Student Achievement Conference, and the National Association of Secondary School Principals Conference on Avoiding Classroom Showdowns While Remaining Stress-Free/Classroom Management Strategies & Techniques that Work and Educating Black Males & Other Reluctant Learners.