Welcome to Lead Great Schools!

Lead Great Schools is a website that includes a monthly blog for current and aspiring school leaders and resources for developing leadership skills. It features reflections on school leadership, specific actions that can be implemented to improve schools, and ways to improve your practice as a school leader.

Welcome to Lead Great Schools! I am Jeremy Gibbs. I currently serve as the 7-12 principal at Sebastopol Attendance Center in Sebastopol, Mississippi. Sebastopol Attendance Center is a part of the Scott County School District, a rural school district of nearly 4,000 students in the heart of Mississippi.

I taught in the classroom for years before I became interested in school leadership. When I decided to pursue school leadership, I applied for a two year program, took the SLLA, and served as a lead teacher and administrative intern before becoming a principal.

Yet once I took on my first principal role, I realized there was so much I was not prepared for. I had learned about the teacher supervision and observation process and school-community relations, but I had little experience casting a vision to inspire students, staff, and stakeholders; crafting a culture of excellence; and creating teams that could make schools great.

My training had prepared me to be a manager; I needed to learn to be a leader.

School Leadership is More than School Management

Don't get me wrong, school leadership does require strong managerial oversight and effective operations to be successful. But to really move the needle in any organization, the leader must be able to do more than ensure that daily operations run smoothly.

To learn more about leadership as quickly as possible, I began working with a leadership and speaking coach, Gary Maze. We met monthly to discuss what was going on at my school and how I could grow as a leader. Gary pointed me toward authors such as John Maxwell and Ken Blanchard.

I also began listening to podcasts from Craig Groeschel, Andy Stanley, and Michael Hyatt to gain more insights and to hone my leadership skills. I became intentional about leading people, not just managing school operations, and the results I saw were astounding.

Once my leadership improved, school culture, instruction, discipline, and student performance improved, as well.

The Five Core Values

During this time, I learned about the importance of communicating foundational core values. A school, along with its leaders, staff, students, and stakeholders, has values that shape the attitudes and actions that are present every day. Those values must be identified and sometimes shifted in order for a school to be the best it can be.

The Five Core Values that I have used at my schools are Bring Your Best, Improve Every Day, Commit to Excellence, Work Together, and Stay Positive. Leading your followers to embrace these core values is an important and ongoing task, and your school will be better for it.

School Improvement Begins with Developing Strong Leaders

Leadership is not an easy role, but it is fulfilling and necessary. I am firmly convinced that training more leaders in schools is one of the most impactful ways to improve schools. In every school I have served, I never wanted to be the tyrant, demanding compliance and assent. Instead, I wanted to be the leader of leaders as we worked toward the same goals.

As an elementary principal at Scott Central Attendance Center, I selected a group of potential future school leaders and began working with them to help develop their leadership skills. When I left Scott Central to become a high school principal at Sebastopol Attendance Center, I gained a new set of potential future school leaders, but I didn’t want to stop pouring into the future leaders I had worked with at Scott Central.

I can also imagine current and aspiring school leaders at different stages in their leadership journey who could benefit from reading about insights I’ve learned along the way. This site is my way to record what I’ve learned, and it will be beneficial to others who want to improve their leadership.

I look forward to sharing with you each month as we work together to Lead Great Schools!