As a professor of educational administration/leadership and as a former school leader, Perry Rettig found himself extremely dissatisfied with the dry, passive, and detached textbooks for such programs. He also found that the students in his programs had been disappointed, too. While traditional texts do a good job of detailing theory and conceptual models important to school leadership, these same theories and constructs are taught without any real-life and meaningful interaction. Practicing Principals is an interactive book that demands that students experience and thoughtfully analyze these theories and constructs in actual, real-life situations before they take on the job. Students, professors, school boards, professional organizations, and the administrators themselves are demanding that university programs become more authentic. With Practicing Principals, Rettig gives the novice the opportunity to practice how they would handle real-life situations and then analyze their work with their peers, their professors, and even their own building administrators.
