Despite no longer working in a school, I’m still amazed by the energy and dedication of educators everywhere.
Whether you’re wrapping up the school year soon or still have a month left like many of my friends in New Jersey, I hope you’ll take a moment to celebrate all you’ve achieved and consider how you and your school can grow next year.
Celebrate Successes: Take the opportunity to recognize the incredible accomplishments of your staff and students. Their hard work and resilience have made this year a success. Organize events or send personal notes to highlight the remarkable milestones achieved, both individually and collectively. Everyone deserves to be celebrated!
Reflect and Plan for Growth: This is also the perfect time for reflection and planning. Here are some ideas to guide this process:
- Seek Feedback for Growth: Engage with your staff to gather their insights on how you can improve as a leader. Create a survey or hold informal conversations to understand what worked well and what could be better. This feedback is invaluable in shaping your approach and strengthening your leadership.
- Intentional Planning for the Future: Take a deliberate approach in planning for the upcoming year. Reflect on this year’s experiences and identify areas where change or improvement is needed. Encourage your team to set goals and develop actionable plans that align with your vision for next year.
- Professional Development: Identify areas where your staff could benefit from additional training or resources. Investing in professional development not only improves instructional practices but also empowers your teachers to feel more confident and capable in their roles. This could be through formal training sessions or a collaborative book study.
We’re either working toward greatness or falling away from it. By celebrating achievements and reflecting on how to improve, we’re continually creating greatness.
#ChooseToBeGreat
Angelo
Published by Angelo DelliSanti
“Education? You don’t want to do that with your life. You’ve got other plans.” That’s the advice Angelo DelliSanti was given when he entered his school counselor’s office during his Senior year of high school. She was right; he did have other plans. He’d spent the previous three years of his high school career preparing for a career as an officer in the United States Navy. But something happened during that first semester of his Senior year that forever changed the course of his life: he accepted an internship with a math teacher and spent the semester helping struggling math students learn basic algebra. Immediately, he was hooked and, as they say, the rest is history.
Before joining the Capturing Kids’ Hearts team, Angelo spent the first fifteen years of his career as a teacher, assistant principal, and principal. He returned to his alma mater after college to teach World History. Five years later, he became an Assistant Principal at a middle school and was introduced to Capturing Kids’ Hearts. For the next ten years, relationships with students, teachers, and parents were the centerpiece of his leadership as an administrator. During his time as a Principal implementing the Capturing Kids’ Hearts process, his schools saw tremendous academic gains, skyrocketing scholarship totals, historic graduation rates, and, most importantly, significant, positive responses on teacher and student climate and culture surveys. In 2022, after a few years of conversation, Angelo joined the Capturing Kids’ Hearts team as a Leadership Solutions Strategist. In this role, his mission is simple: Help leaders build better schools.
Angelo completed his Bachelor of the Arts in History and Secondary Education as a North Carolina Teaching Fellow at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. He returned to his alma mater for both his Master’s in School Administration and Doctor of Education in Educational Leadership, though he left prior to completing his dissertation. In 2017, he was awarded the Outstanding Student Philip Morris Educational Fellowship for the UNC-Charlotte College of Education and was named the Rowan-Salisbury Schools Principal of the Year in 2018.
Angelo married his wife, Kasey, in the summer of 2008. They live in North Carolina and love getting away to the mountains or the beach every chance they get. In his free time, Angelo loves playing golf, reading non-fiction, cooking new meals for his family and friends, and, far more importantly, eating that food with them around a table filled with laughs and smiles.
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CHOOSE TO BE GREAT 