Dynamic new generation of school principals is taking schools towards excellence

Sheetal Murudkar is the principal of Dadabhai Naoroji Nagar Mumbai Public School. This Teacher’s Day, we find out how her focus on the learning of her students as well as teachers is slowly driving her school towards excellence.

The New Kind of Principal
When I was in school, my principal sat in a large oak panelled office, which we rarely ever entered, on the topmost floor in the tallest building on campus. At Dadabhai Naoroji Nagar Mumbai Public School, a municipal school adopted by the Akanksha Foundation, principal Sheetal Murudkar has no office. She chose not to. “Sitting in an office all day does not suit me. I like to be where the action is – in my classrooms.” 

The morning I was in Sheetal’s school, she had participated in the school assembly, and spent time in three different classrooms observing teachers. 

Principals typically spend most of their time in their offices, dealing with administrative matters, and tend not to be involved with day-to-day classroom instruction. When I asked Math teacher Kavitha Billava how she would describe Sheetal as a leader, she said, “I feel like Sheetal is part of team. She is one of us. She is not unapproachable like some of the principals I worked with previously.”

Clearly, Sheetal is a different kind of principal. Perhaps it is her non-traditional background that enables her to approach her role with such a fresh perspective. “I never thought I would be in Education. I used to work in Human Resources but I found my calling when I began my teaching stint at Akanksha.” 

Sheetal taught for two years and was noticed for her innovative methods such as phonic action association and parent-child remediation sessions. She was then chosen by Akanksha to spearhead the inception of four new schools in Mumbai. Sheetal, eager to rise to the challenge of her new role as school leader, completed the internal training for school leaders. But being a principal is a unique challenge. They say that no two days as principal are the same. One minute they could be mopping up a child’s vomit, and meeting with a government official the next. That is why it is important that principals prepare themselves for their role and constantly update their skills. 

Being the principal of a school serving low-income communities presents its own set of additional challenges. They have to run their school with less-than-ideal infrastructure and resources. They usually work with first-generation English speakers and school-goers, and struggle to develop their teachers to a level where they are able to effectively serve their students. 

Principals also have the enormous responsibility of managing parents’ expectations while typically receiving less than adequate support from them in the education of the child. The morning that I was in Sheetal’s school, a woman demanded that her child be taken in to the school. Sheetal and Farida Syed, a member of the School Management Committee (a parent representative body), calmed her down and explained that unfortunately her daughter had not made the school enrolment lottery at the beginning of the year and so could not be admitted to the school. Watching this mother’s desperation served as a huge reminder of how high parents’ aspirations for their children are and how acutely aware they are of the importance of a good school in fulfilling these aspirations. 

Another issue is that examples of excellence in low-income education within our own contexts are rare or non-existent. So Sheetal cannot point to another municipal school in the city and motivate her team to work towards a similar bar of excellence. She and her team use their own impetus to set their school’s aspirational goals and deliver excellence. 

My organisation, India School Leadership Institute (ISLI), incubated by the Akanksha Foundation, offers training and support to dynamic school leaders like Sheetal with the goal of helping them create an exemplary high-performing, low-income school that serves as a model for others in the system.

A year ago, Sheetal was accepted into this program. At this point, she was running two of Akanksha’s youngest schools and had helped set up two more. So what motivated Sheetal, a busy principal, wife and mother, to still seek development opportunities that would demand additional time and effort from her? “ISLI is for school leaders who see potential in themselves and know that they need to be better leaders in order to serve their schools effectively,” Sheetal replies.

As part of the ISLI program, Sheetal was intensively trained with by education experts, through visits to model schools in India and the US, and received regular one-on-one coaching. The program is structured so that school principals learn the theory behind school improvement practices and then have the opportunity to experience good practices through school visits and week-long immersion programs in high-performing schools. Finally, each fellow’s personal coach helps them put the theory into practice and gives them real-time feedback and guidance as they implement initiatives in their schools.

When Teachers Learn, Children Learn
That morning I had the opportunity to see some of Sheetal’s learning being put into practice. Regular observation of teachers is a cornerstone of the ISLI program and key for school leaders to improve learning in their schools. In each classroom that she observed, she spent a short amount of time closely observing and taking notes. As soon as class wrapped up, she and the teacher huddled together for a feedback session. Sheetal had her notes from the observation ready and constantly referred to them as she spoke to the teacher about what was appreciated and what could be improved in the classroom that day. She was encouraging but firm in communicating what sort of change she expected to see in the teacher and the classroom. At the end of it, the teacher went away with a specific action-item she had to work on for the next week. 

Having someone observe you while you do your job and provide critical feedback could be intimidating. But when I asked the teacher, Meenakshi Patel about it she said, “Sheetal is not one to dictate. She always listens and helps me come up the solutions. She also gives me complete flexibility in implementing the solution the way I want to. She trusts her teachers to know their kids best.”

Driven by Data
After three such observations, each followed by an immediate feedback session, Sheetal started to get ready for a ‘data meeting’. 

A ‘data meeting’ she explained was when teachers are asked to predict the performance of their class in a monthly test and when the test results come in, the teachers sit together to compare the prediction with the actual results. “The whole exercise is to help teachers see the gap between teaching and learning. What we may think we have taught as teachers may not actually have been learnt by every student in the class. This understanding is essential for teachers to improve performance of themselves and their students,” she clarified.

At the meeting, teachers sat around in a circle and shared their predictions and the final results for their subjects. Some teachers had underestimated while others had overestimated the performance of their class. “It’s all a learning process. They are beginning to get comfortable with data and that’s the big win for me”, Sheetal told me later. After every teacher reported their results, they performed an in-depth analysis of the results. Were there certain questions on which most students had gotten similar scores? Which were the questions that a lot of the class seemed to struggle with?

It was heartening to see that when a teacher read out good results for their class, the whole group, along with Sheetal, clapped and cheered. So a data meeting also turned into an opportunity for celebrating success. I could see how Kavitha’s observation about Sheetal being “part of the team” was true.

A New Kind of Institute for a New Kind of Principal
For us at ISLI, it has been remarkable to see Sheetal’s growth. When we see the changes being made by this new-generation principal in her school, we couldn’t be more certain that her students have some of the best chances for receiving a great education among all the students in the public education system. I asked Sheetal what motivates her. She said, “My team! It used to be the kids. Of course, I still focus on the kids but now it's more about the adults! I am so inspired by my teachers’ love of learning and the love they show to their students.” 

It is such principals that ISLI empowers to be highly effective leaders for their schools. This year we are working with 24 school leaders and for next year we are on the lookout for 50 school leaders in Mumbai, Pune, Hyderabad and Delhi each. We cannot wait to create the schools that our country needs alongside these dynamic leaders.

Shruti Shankar is the Operations and Marketing Manager at India School Leadership Institute (ISLI).

The Akanksha Foundation runs 15 municipal schools in Mumbai and Pune in partnership with the BMC and the PMC respectively. Follow them on twitter at @Akanksha_India.​