USD Magazine Fall 2010

The

Principle

How aspiring principals learn to lead by Kelly Knufken

abiola Bagula noticed a boy was showing up to school clad in too-small, pink flip-flops. So she went to Wal-Mart and bought him a pair of shoes. How’s that for getting out of the principal’s office? “Because I work in such a high-poverty school, I think it’s my duty to also know if there’s anything else they need help with,” Bagula says. “I make it a point of taking care of them as much as I can.” So she brings in the local food bank to help make sure the students are nourished well enough at home to come to school healthier and ready to learn. For Bagula, it all contributes to job one: seeing that the students at Balboa Elementary School get the best instruction possible. She honed her philosophy of instructional leadership in the well-regarded Educational Leadership Development Academy (ELDA), a collaboration between USD’s School of Leadership and Education Sciences (SOLES) and the San Diego Unified School District. ELDA takes small groups of top teachers — 14 in the cohort that began in Fall 2010 — F I l l u s t r a t i o n s b y B a r b a r a F e r g u s o n

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