David W.

Ruehs Leadership Philosophy and Professional Goals

I have fallen in love with drastically changing students’ lives. My biggest impact that I

could have on students’ lives, I have found, is through my own leadership and improving

teaching practices around me. I earned a master’s degree in educational leadership, became an

instructional coach for three years, and now I am currently serving in my second year as an

associate principal at Burlington High School, a 4A school district in Iowa. My leadership in

education is firmly rooted in a culture based on relationships and trust. My goal is to complete

the remainder of my working career in educational leadership with my eyes on an eventual

superintendent or higher education position in Minnesota.

When I think about the most successful schools that I have worked in or collaborated

with, I keep coming back to the word “relationships.” It is incredible to work with students who

have given the adults in the room their trust and to see the lengths they will go to build and

master their understanding of some skill or concept. A strong relationship with the school

system for parents is based on information, communication, and trust that every stakeholder has

their child’s best interest at heart. John Hattie’s work on effect size in education points to

collective teacher efficacy and teacher estimates of success as having the largest effect size of

influence towards student learning. Those are both facilitated by building a culture of trust based

on relationships.

I have heard horror stories of school districts that have developed a culture of an “us

versus them” mentality when it comes to teacher and administrative relationships. That kind of

culture is so counterproductive to the very nature of public education, that Hattie claims that

students actually decline in their success if they feel disliked. To build that nurturing culture for

our students and families, strong relationships and trust need to be built between the building

leadership and the staff members. I often talk with staff members that I work with about how
David W. Ruehs Leadership Philosophy and Professional Goals

every interaction they have with a person should be considered a bank transaction. A positive

interaction is like a deposit to grow the relationship account or it can be a negative interaction

which takes a withdrawal and depletes what has been built up.

I cannot state the importance of relationships in education any more. They are also

imperative in personal lives. My wife was born and raised in Byron, Minnesota. A goal of hers

has always been to move to, work in, and retire in Minnesota, closer to her family. To keep our

relationship strong, I want to stretch my understanding of leadership and become an

administrator in Minnesota. My first real goal in future home state is to become an assistant

principal under a dynamic building leader to finetune and hone my budding leadership skills.

Ultimately, I am looking towards loftier goals such as a role as a head principal, superintendent,

or professor in an education program. To open any of those doors, I need to earn a Minnesota

administration license.

Strong school systems are based on cultures of relationships and trust with the students’

best interests at the root of their work. My goal is to take and apply that mantra in the 2020-2021

school year in a principal role in Minnesota. John C. Maxwell said it better than I could ever

hope to do myself, “Students don’t care how much you know until they know how much you

care.”