The acim should possess special qualities of being a leader. These qualities will determine him/her of his/her qualifications in managing his/her people in the school vineyard. Without these extra-ordinary strengths or qualities of the school leader, he/she should not be worthy of his/her job as school leaders. This might be the reasons why there are school leaders who fail to functions successfully in their job as School Principal. If only all of School Leaders have the exceptional skills or qualities of being a leader, then we are absolutely sure that our educational system is on the way to standard and excellence.
The School Principal should first be transparent in his/her work as school leader. He/She should have the clean conscience of facing the night and day with all the honesty inside and outside of himself/herself. The one that has the drive to teach his/her people to bring back the value of honesty because he/ she is a model of such virtue. Before the School Principal could mandate honesty and transparency among his/her people, he/she should be a paragon of such virtue for others to follow. The old adage “Honesty is the best Policy” is used by the Department of Education (DepEd) as a living reminder to all school leaders in the educational vineyard. Posting this adage to every classroom in the school cascades the virtue of honesty from the school leader to the students. For that, transparency becomes the aftermath of honesty which the school leader should possess.
b) Good Visionary
The School Principal should visualize about the future of the school. This kind of special quality is considered an exceptional one because not all of us can have a good visionary gift. He or she can be a fortune- teller who could guess what happen in the future. But unlike the fortune- teller, the School Principal can guess what will happen in a month or year to come through his/ her anticipating skills, decision- making skills, extra-sensory skill and through his/her experience. My School Principal almost never sleep for the night because even she is about to sleep or even she is already sleeping, she is still bringing with her the plans and the future of her school.
I even told her once ” I am sure you are not sleeping Ma’am because every slits and slats of the school issues and concerns you have all the prepared solutions”. She replied “We should always dream. We have to dream big, bigger than our dream!” To prove that, while others including me were already snoring in the deepest silent night, she sent text messages to our cellphones about instructions of our job as coordinators, teaching personnel even to PTA officers of the school. That is a school principal’s additional quality to ponder with.
Another quality of a school leader is being a risk taker not for himself/herself but for his/her constituents. The best leader is the one who tries to cross the unchartered seas and see for himself what lies beyond. This is another exceptional skill of being a leader. Most of the educational leaders are obedient and they conform to the norm of the department. But among those many, someone has to be brave enough to wave his might and risk his job just for the improvement of his/her school and people. The very good example of how the School Principal is risking his career is his/her decision to divert funds for another projects. This is a violation of department’s policy.
