Feb. 17, 2025
Episode 18: Transforming School Leaders: Insights from Angela Kelly's Leadership Journey!
Fan Mail! What happens when a single conversation can redefine your entire career path? Angela Kelly, a dedicated educator and leadership coach, shares her inspiring journey from a brief stint in studying finance to discovering her true calling in education. Her story is one of transformative growth, beginning with the Upward Bound program, which set her on a path to become the first in her family to attend college. Angela’s experience underscores the importance of mentorship, mindset shifts,...
What happens when a single conversation can redefine your entire career path? Angela Kelly, a dedicated educator and leadership coach, shares her inspiring journey from a brief stint in studying finance to discovering her true calling in education. Her story is one of transformative growth, beginning with the Upward Bound program, which set her on a path to become the first in her family to attend college. Angela’s experience underscores the importance of mentorship, mindset shifts, and the power of aligning one’s career with personal passions.
Angela takes us through the challenging transition from teaching to school leadership, highlighting the obstacles she faced while earning administrative credentials and competing for principal roles. Her narrative is a candid reflection on the trials of opening a new school as a first-year principal, tackling everything from construction woes to personal struggles as a single parent. Through perseverance and the discovery of life coaching, Angela emphasizes the value of seeking support and integrating new skills into one’s leadership identity amidst complex professional dynamics.
In a world where school leaders often feel isolated, Angela’s insights foster a spirit of community and connection. From her emotional regulation techniques to the introduction of the STEAR cycle, designed to help principals manage their thoughts and emotions, Angela provides practical guidance for aspiring and current educational leaders. By sharing her experiences and the importance of building supportive networks, Angela offers a beacon of empowerment for those navigating the multifaceted challenges of school leadership. Tune in to explore Angela’s story and discover strategies to empower your leadership journey.
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00:00 - Empowered Principal Life Coaching Interview
15:12 - Becoming an Empowered School Leader
20:20 - Navigating Challenges as a School Leader
34:54 - The STEAR Cycle
47:54 - Navigating School Leadership and Balance
57:28 - Empowered Principal Podcast Interview
WEBVTT
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Today I got to sit down with a special person that has helped me in my own educational leadership journey.
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Let's all agree that being an educational leader is tough.
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There's no doubt about it.
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But what if you didn't have to choose between success and balance?
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What if three things can be true at the same time?
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You can enjoy being a school leader, you can be great.
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At the same time, you can enjoy being a school leader, you can be great at school leadership and you can spend more time with your family without feeling overwhelmed.
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Well, you ask how?
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Well, I'll tell you how, through Angela Kelly Coaching.
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Today I am joined by Angela Kelly, the creator of the Empowered Principal Podcast and the Empowered Principal Life and Leadership Coaching Program.
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She's a former teacher, principal and district administrator with over 25 years of experience in education.
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As a certified life and leadership coach, angela has made it her mission to help school leaders create exceptional results while actually enjoying the leadership journey.
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In this episode, we're diving into the mindset shifts, strategies and support systems that allow school leaders to thrive in their roles without burnout.
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If you've ever wondered how to lead with confidence, balance your personal life and truly love what you do, this conversation is for you.
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Let's get this episode started with Angela Kelly.
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All right, everybody.
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Today we have a special guest.
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This special guest is somebody that is near and dear to my heart, because they kind of helped me out as a principal throughout my journey.
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So I'd like to welcome to the show Angela Kelly.
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Welcome.
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Hi there, jeff.
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It's so good to be here.
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Thank you for having me on the show
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Hey, Angela, I wanted to kind of get things started here with just kind of talking about your journey in education.
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So tell me about how you got education.
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What is the reason that got you to become a teacher in the first place?
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Wow, that goes back a few decades.
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So you know, like any kid coming out of high school, the big question is what are you going to do with your life?
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And for me, I actually need to start back into middle school.
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So I was in middle school, I was had moved a lot and there was this presentation in our you know theater and it was called Upward Bound and it was a program that was designed for students of families who had not.
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They're the first generation of students to potentially go to college, so nobody in my family line prior to me had attended a four-year university and you also had to meet certain requirements financially.
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So my family fit these financial goals and by the end of eighth grade I signed up for this program called Upward Bound.
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It was at Iowa State University.
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I was born and raised in Iowa and it was the game changer for my life, because I don't know that I actually had sights on going to college.
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I didn't really contemplate what my future would look like.
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It was that life was just happening and I was just going through the motions of being a kid and going to high school.
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And then this happened and I started thinking about my future, actually thinking about what I wanted when I grew up, the kind of career I wanted to have, and I went through Upward Bound for five years.
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So from the summer of eighth grade, clear through the summer of the year I graduated.
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So five summers, instead of being the kid who you know went to movies and hung out with her friends and went out on dates, I was going to college.
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I was going to school through this program.
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The first couple of years they are prep courses to prepare you for the rigor of college and then the last three years you start taking actual classes with other college students while you're in high school and then you have an intense amount of preparation and support and tutoring to ensure, because if you're going to get anything lower than a C, they kind of pull you because they realize you might not be ready.
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So I was able.
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By the time I graduated high school I had a semester of college credit and that was so invigorating and so motivating.
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I had this momentum going where, like, I started to identify as somebody who could actually go to college and get a degree.
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I have to highlight that because that program really did change my life and I credit the Upward Bound program to creating a vision for my adult life and my future.
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So I have to give a shout out to Upward Bound.
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And then when I got into college I actually my dad was like, well, you should go into finance.
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That just sounds very prestigious and you're really good at math.
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And I took one semester.
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I hated it.
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I was falling asleep in the class.
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I remember in economy class I slept through a quiz.
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It was just bad, it was bad news.
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And I was sitting down with some friends over the summer and they were asking how college went and I said, well, it's okay.
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But I wasn't fired up.
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I was more fired up about the social scene and being away from family and being a little independent college student than I was actually my future and learning.
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And I had a very profound conversation about what did I want to do, what did I love to do?
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That conversation it came up like I love kids.
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I babysat from a very young age.
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I loved being around kids, they lit me up and I loved school.
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So I think the combination of truly loving school as a student I always played school, I played the teacher and combined with my, you know, young adult love for children and I would say too, I really wanted to improve the experience of school for students, and not that I had a bad experience, but you know, I grew up in the 70s and 80s, so there were things that we could do to improve the experience of students and the emotional experience that students had and in addition to the style of learning that we did.
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So that really those combinations of of events in my life drew me into teaching and the minute I shifted into from finance into into education, it was like luck.
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I knew right then I was locked loaded.
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This was my life, I loved it, ready to go, and that was it.
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I never looked back and I ended up getting my early childhood credential along with my elementary teaching credential
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Right, as a teacher.
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How long were you a teacher?
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You know?
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I taught two years in Minnesota.
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So I graduated from Iowa State.
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We moved up to Minnesota.
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I taught pre-K.
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It was a birth through grade age five, early childhood program.
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I was the teacher and the coordinator for two years there.
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My husband and I moved out to California in 95.
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For two years there, my husband and I moved out to California in 95.
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And I taught at the same school for about 15 years.
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So I taught primarily kindergarten.
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It's my love language is kindergarten and I also taught first grade and then I became an instructional coach.
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I was a reading specialist so I did, you know, different seats on the bus, but I was definitely elementary, really profound love for early literacy and early childhood development and just the social-emotional development of children and I really loved working with parents.
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That's why I chose kindergarten, because you can just you get to bring them in and you get to cultivate them and their experience.
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And that was really important for me to set the stage for these families to have a positive experience with their school and to really love the school that they were sending their children to.
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So I did that for 15 years and in the meantime I'm going to say, like around 12, 13 years into teaching, I felt this desire for more.
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But you know, let's be honest on the podcast here.
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You know, when you're a teacher and you're like it's teachers, they have their mindset, perspective, and then admin.
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And as a teacher, you're looking at the admin, like I don't know about that, I don't know if I want to go to the dark side.
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I don't know that I could handle it.
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You know, deep inside I was like I don't know if I could handle it, but on the surface it was like I don't want to be like one of them, I don't want to have to do it like that.
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Or, you know, I just, like you, have thoughts and opinions about it because you've never experienced it.
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So you can only imagine.
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You know what it would be like.
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And we go both ways.
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We imagine that it's going to be amazing.
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We're going to have this big impact and what you know, it's going to be better than ever.
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It's going to oh, we're going to get out of a classroom, we're going to be able to walk the campus and we're going to have all this freedom and power.
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And then you also think about ooh, that looks really hard.
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And they're the ones who stay last and they're the ones who eat last and they're the ones who, you know, take the heat and I don't know if I can handle that.
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Am I capable of leadership, actually leading a vision, a school, a community, and so?
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But I was feeling it and it was just kind of I was keeping it on the inside.
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Well, my superintendent at the time was offering this program.
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So if any of you out there listening are teachers or site administrators or district administrators which I'm sure there's a bunch of you out there listening this program was another like.
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I think about these little milestones in my story that at the time I had no idea the impact they were really going to have, but I could feel like it was a calling to go into that.
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The second little milestone for me was this program.
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We called it EFULA.
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It was like, basically it was a leadership development program and my superintendent had the brilliant idea of like cultivating leaders from within the district and not always trying to hire somebody outside who didn't know our culture or understand, you know, our vision.
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And it was a two-year program.
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We'd go once or twice a week and it was pretty intense.
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Actually.
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It was more than I thought it was going to be, but it was a profound group of people, of my own peers, and we talked leadership and we talked straight leadership.
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We didn't sugarcoat it.
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We talked about how it actually felt to be a leader, the real challenges, the work-life balance issue, time management how do you get planning in, just how you keep it all together emotionally when teachers this and that.
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And it really gave me perspective and insight.
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But the best thing it gave me was I went from thinking I'm not cut out, it's not possible to like I think I can actually do this, I think I can actually do this.
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Did you have that moment, jeff?
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Yeah.
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So in my journey as becoming a principal, honestly I was a teacher in the classroom for 11 years.
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I was a math teacher and coached football, wrestling track, you know, did all those things.
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I love it.
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I love the connections with the kids.
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It honestly wasn't until I got into Omaha, where I was actually went from Millard North High School as a teacher to Ralston, and the main reason I went to Ralston was because of Dr Adler, who was the superintendent at Ralston.
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My main question was could I get into your leadership academy if I come over?
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Because at the current district I was in at Millard, I had to wait three years and I did not want to wait three years.
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I kind of wanted the training because I felt like it would be good for me to be able to have some more background and to become an educational leader.
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I had my credentials already.
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I had my curriculum master's and I also have my educational administration master's and so I was like I need to have something more like Leadership Academy.
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Maybe it'll make me more marketable.
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And so I spent two years in the Ralston Leadership Academy with Dr Adler, which was a great experience and that kind of propelled me into becoming a principal and having some experiences and some just insights on what that's like.
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So kind of very similar pathways there.
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So tell me more about, like you know, you're going from a teacher into becoming, on the dark side now right, becoming a principal.
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You kind of talked about that you know piece, where you went into like a leadership academy and how did that propel you?
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What was the next step to making that transition from teacher to principalship?
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Yeah, so that's a great question.
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I went through the program and it was the two years, so, yeah, it was like an academy and we graduated out of that and then shortly after that, so there's this period of time and I was in California at the time.
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I lived out in California for 30 years, so my career really spans primarily in California.
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But I there was a, you know, you had to go through the motions of getting the credential and because I already had a master's degree, I could go through kind of a.
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It was like a shorter term credentialing program offer because they were in need of administrators, so they had this kind of a.
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It was like a shorter term credentialing program offer because they were in need of administrators, so they had this kind of like limited time bonus.
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If you act now, you can go through this program through the county or the state and add on your administrative credentials.
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So I did that.
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And then I you know you have to take the test.
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And I remember driving down to Santa Cruz, California, and taking this test and it was a handwritten.
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It was just old school like handwritten six hours straight of just writing and writing and I thought, oh gosh, I hope I pass this test and I just you know you're just like a kid again, like waiting for your ACT or SAT scores to come back, and it came back.
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And it's another thing to live the experience and to be in it.
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Right, and, Jeff, you know that the that is definitely true.
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There is the theory of leadership and there's there's the life of a leader and there's the leadership I think, day to day, Right.
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Yep, yeah, yeah, and I know like for me, you know, transitioning from teacher and to becoming a principal, that I really know what I was getting myself into.
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Not really, I just knew that was my next step and for me it was like I was looking for that person to give me the opportunity and it kind of.
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I did a series of interviews because I, you know you're, there's a lot at my time, there's a lot more competitiveness becoming a principal in Nebraska at that time, because you know, everybody that was a teacher that wants to get into a principalship was trying to get into those or you're competing against other candidates that might have some more experience.
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So getting into it, you know it was hard.
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But once I got that opportunity, that's when I was trying to make the most of it and so that's part of like for me, you know, becoming a principal.
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I had the education, I had the academy, I had all this knowledge.
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Now I had to put it in practice and that's the part that gets tough, because there's not a lot of professional development out there for principals and for people that are just get stuck on an island, because my first principalship was out in Southern Valley.
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It was, you know out, in the middle of South Central Nebraska we, our school, was set in a cornfield basically, and so you know we couldn't.
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I mean, we had our conferences principals, we had our in Nebraska, we had educational service unit which we go to to do some professional development, but there wasn't a lot of ton of stuff out there.
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And then for me, about two years in, I started searching for professional development.
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And that's kind of when I ran across your podcast for professional development, and that's kind of when I ran across your podcast, the Empowered Principal.
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So tell me something about you know, going from that principal leadership what was that like?
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But then transition into getting into becoming the empowered principle person you are like.
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You basically help other principals manage not just the stresses of the job but also their life, and so kind of tell me about your principalship a little bit, but then kind of go into um, you becoming the empowered principal, which you actually wrote a book and I'll pull it out right here.
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So so the Empowered Principal by Angela Kelly, which kind of is the basis to what you do now.
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So kind of tell us about that journey.
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Yes.
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So fast forward to my first principalship.
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I got tapped on the shoulder by the superintendent and here's what I want to say about this for the listeners out there.
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If you're an aspiring leader or you're even considering, you're listening to this podcast with Jeff because you're thinking about becoming a leader and he's inspiring and you're like, oh gosh, jeff can do it.
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I want to do it.
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I want you to know this.
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It's an identity conversation with yourself, feeling capable, being capable.
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So, if you're not in the position yet, I want you just to imagine what it would look like, what it would feel like you know what the experience would be, and start to step into, even in just your mind, just kind of role play, what it might feel like to be a leader and get yourself into that identity of being a school leader.
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That's going to help you transition.
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It's going to feel easier to actually cross that threshold into into being that.
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So in my situation, my experience was I got tapped on the shoulder.
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It's your time, you've got to apply for this.
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I actually applied to be the AP of a middle school because I thought AP would be easier transition into leadership.
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Well, I didn't get that position.
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I was, you know, really sad at the time, but my superintendent said I have other plans for you, and so he hired me as a first year principal to open a brand new school, a brand new campus.
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So I who I wasn't.
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You're a new principal and you got a brand new school.
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Let's talk about adding on the stress.
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Yeah, I had I had enough issues with just um, the construction, construction and putting a new HVAC last summer and getting the building ready, and I'm going in my seventh year and I was in enough stress to do that.
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I could not imagine being a first year principal, opening a new building and having all those things added to it.
00:19:40.326 --> 00:19:42.311
So, yeah, tell me more about that.
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Yes, well, I'll tell you those first two years.
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So I was opening a brand new site, so it was a brand new group of people, brand new community, brand new physical buildings.
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So I was dealing with construction and I always I love to tell this story.
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It was a back to school night.
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It's like a week into the brand new school year.
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It's my first five days on the job with people on campus.
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Back to school night, parents are coming, children, campus is full of people and the office calls and she said you know, houston, we have a problem.
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She said the main water pipe broke and there is raw sewage running down the central campus.
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Oh man.
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So I had to be like, okay, everybody to the side, but I mean metaphorically, that's how I felt.
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I was literally wading through.
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All of you know the newness and the craziness of school leadership and these crazy moments were happening.
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But you know, all humor aside, it was the hardest two years of my life.
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I was a single mom at the time.
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My son had just transitioned into middle school, he was a sixth grader and I was a single parent trying to operate a brand new school and you know, I had to really set the foundations.
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I had to create this site council team and you know all of this, all of the teams had to be developed, vision, all of that.
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And so that was not the empowered, principal moment that I was having.
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It was like probably the most disempowered two years of my life.
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And there were some moments I just felt like it was happening to me Like the job is coming at me with a fire hose.
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I can't keep up.
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I was staying so late at work, having other people pick up my son, other people take him to his events, going in super early, staying super late, working nights and weekends, and I really thought how did I get myself into this?
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And I don't know how to get myself out of it, and that's when I really felt like I had no power.
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So, fortunately, the district assigned me a mentor and, by the way, I forgot to mention that not only was I a brand new principal at a brand new school, they only allowed me to work there three days a week, and they had me working at the district two days a week to fill another position.
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That was yeah.
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So I, I was spread a little too thin.
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So, and all of that to say, if I've gone through that, I'm sure somebody else listening has been through that too.
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So we feel you, we hear you out there and you can only do so much, right you.
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Just everything gets watered down.
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So you do the best you can.
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But I had a moment, two years, the second year into my school leadership where I thought I don't know if I can do this, and that's when I was searching online for help.
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And you're right, jeff, that was the first time I noticed there's a huge gap in support at the admin level.
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It's kind of like, hey, you got hired, we're so happy you're here, here are the keys.
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Go live with you know, go figure it out, live a great life, but please don't come back to the district asking for support because we're too busy dealing with other things and so you really are figuring it out on your own and it's very isolating and it's scary.
00:22:52.423 --> 00:22:59.071
There's a lot of there's a lot on your plate, a lot of responsibility, and you're thinking about students, staff, community.
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You know, of course, test scores come in and scare the.
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You know the GVs.
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I was desperate to be successful.
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I wanted to want the job, I wanted to want it and I wanted to be good at it.
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And that's when I've literally Googled where to look for help.
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And you can go to a conference, you can read a book, you can talk to your peers.
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That was about what was available and I love going to conferences, I love socializing, I love learning, but there is you go and you're motivated and inspired and then you come back into the realities and it's hard to integrate what you've learned for the long haul, like integrated into your identity as a principal, your methods and your approach into leadership.
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And so the next how long was I a site leader?
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Two years at that school.
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Then they moved me back to my homeschool.
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Now I am the boss of my peers of 15 years, so I don't know if you've experienced that.
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I think a lot of principals become the leader of their peers.
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That is an interesting dynamic to have to navigate.
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And so, again, there wasn't internal support.
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I sought support outside, but what I found was life coaching.
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I didn't know what life coaching was, but I knew I needed one because my life was a big mess.
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I was not feeling like I was doing anything well, being a parent, running my household, being a good principal, being an instructional leader.
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So I found this person, dr Martha Beck, and I signed up for her program, not to become a life coach, but to learn what it meant to coach my own life.
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I wanted some empowerment back, I wanted some agency, I wanted a sense of control somewhere, somewhere along the way.
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And from her I learned just some techniques to just kind of regulate myself emotionally when I was overwhelmed, or to stop and take time for myself to just literally make sure that I'm drinking water, make sure that I'm eating lunch we weren't running around so busy making sure that I put time limits on the amount of work that I did.
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So I started playing around with this idea of I'm a human in a school leadership role versus.
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I'm a school leader and that's my only identity, because that job's never done.
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