Educational leadership in 847 easy steps

I remember walking into the bookstore at Teachers College, Columbia U. as a new doc. student and thinking, “what value am I going to add to the ed. research enterprise?  A book has been written on everything; all the answers to all of the problems in education are right here in these books.”  I still have those feelings when attending major research conferences. 

Today, I was looking through one of the many catalogues I receive from publishers of educational texts.  This one is from Corwin Press, one of the biggies.  There are over 130 pages in the catalogue with 5 or 6 books described on each page.  The range of topics and title is incredible, and this is only one of the many publishers of educational texts.  I was amused when browsing through just the sections on Leadership and Principals I found the following titles:

• Twelve Roles for Facilitators for School Change
• Eight Habits of the Heart for Educators
• More than 50 ways to Build Team Consensus
• 36 Tools for Building Spirit in Learning Communities
• Leading Every Day: 124 Actions for Effective Leadership

Can you imagine the permutations?  If as a school leader, I could/should take on 12 roles, develop 8 habits, use 36 tools and take 124 actions, that should do it, right?  No problem.