Turning It Around: Small Steps or Sweeping Changes to Create the School Your Students Deserve
By Todd Whitaker and Courtney Monterecy
(Routledge/Eye On Education, 2025 – Learn more)
Reviewed by Ronald Williamson
There’s lots of advice about how to transform your school – change the culture, modify curriculum, alter instruction, improve school safety, and much more. Do you make grand, dramatic change or start small? Where do you begin?
That’s why Todd Whitaker and Courtney Monterecy’s Turning It Around is such an important addition to the literature. It’s written by current and former principals who provide concrete examples about how to launch a plan to turn around your school. The book is grounded in a real school and real examples, and reflects the work of a practicing principal. The frank discussion acknowledges the challenges as well as the benefits of change.
Perhaps the most important lesson from Turning It Around is that any principal can make a real difference in their school. It starts with their own behavior and focus. What a principal does, the things they pay attention to, the values they espouse, the way they spend time, and the way they allocate the budget send subtle, and not so subtle, messages to the school community about what is valued, what is important. That’s noticed and drives the change you want.
Turning It Around also reminds us that transforming a school doesn’t involve knocking down everything that existed prior to your arrival or criticizing prior efforts or personnel. Rather it comes from taking a “fresh” look at every regularity of the school day from arrival and dismissal procedures to handling student behavior, supporting and coaching of teachers, as well as communicating with parents and the school community.
One of my favorite quotes in this book comes from an experienced principal who says, “As a principal, everything that happens at this school is your business.” That recognition is critical to turning around a school – the acceptance that you share responsibility for everything that occurs at your school.
A Template for Leading Intentionally
A new principal must be prepared to immediately get to work assessing their school and changing things that will convey a message about values and direction. Turning It Around provides a template for beginning the work. Meet with small groups of people, learn about your school, but at the same time be thinking about what small steps can be taken to signal a new direction. The key is intentionality and focus. It’s a reminder that what a principal pays attention to becomes important; others recognize that importance and begin to pay attention as well.
Turning It Around suggests four focus areas for school leaders, including assessing the current status, strengthening the work of teachers, shaping school culture, and cultivating expanded leadership.
Each area is important, but one stands out and shapes your ability to accomplish the others – the hiring, nurturing and retention of a quality staff. The second focus area of Turning It Around offers a guide to doing just that. It provides ideas for hiring and onboarding new staff. It recognizes that how you interview candidates, the things you ask about, and the way you build relationships send a signal about what is valued and important. You want people who want to be at your school and who share the values you believe are important at your school.
In addition to hiring and nurturing a quality staff, a principal also needs to recognize that everyone may not be a good fit. Accepting the need to address the “quit but stayed” phenomena is critical. Turning It Around describes useful strategies for working with teachers who may have lost their passion for teaching or who’ve mentally quit to regain their passion or receive a gentle nudge to seek other opportunities. It’s a problem every principal faces. This book offers suggestions for how to do that tough work with grace and persistence.
Responsive Collaboration to Lead Change
Each section of Turning It Around provides similar guidance. It places a value on creating a collaborative, child-centered school. But it also recognizes that there may be resistance and that leaders must be prepared to make difficult personnel and logistical decisions to truly “turn around” their school.
Schools are dynamic places. They change constantly. The community changes. The families who send their children to the school change. Teachers get hired, transfer, and retire. School and district leaders come and go. That means that principals face the need to regularly assess their school, its program, and how well it’s addressing the needs of the children it serves.
Turning It Around helps with that task. It offers novice and experienced principals tools that they can immediately use to look anew at their school, and that can be used to strengthen and enhance its program. The tools, the approaches, and the ideas work in any school.
Turning It Around is a valuable addition to the literature on school improvement. It puts a spotlight on the success of one principal who is both enlightening and motivating. The most important lesson is that schools can be turned around and the principal is key to making that happen.
Dr. Ronald Williamson is Professor Emeritus of Educational Leadership at Eastern Michigan University. He is a former principal, central office administrator and executive director of the National Middle School Association (now AMLE). The author of numerous books on leadership, Ron is the co-author with Barbara R. Blackburn of 7 Strategies for Improving Your School (2019) and Improving Teacher Morale and Motivation: Leadership Strategies that Build Student Success (2024), both from Routledge/Eye On Education.
