Beyond Tears, Tirades, and Tantrums

Clinical simulations provide school leaders with opportunities to enact and examine their leadership approaches,decisions, and policies, without consequence. Building on medical education’s use of standardized patients, this bookintroduces standardized individuals and clinical simulations into the field of school leader preparation. In live, one-tooneinteractions, school leaders engage in variety of professional situations with standardized students, parents,teachers, and community members.Each carefully scripted standardized individual presents a problem of practice, while unscripted school leaderparticipants are free to enact their own professional knowledge, dispositions, and decision-making approaches as theyengage within a simulation. When confronted by an angry father (in simulation), leaders practice their explanations andpolicies surrounding challenged curriculum. When presented with an inebriated student (in simulation), leaders enactdecision-steps associated with student discipline and communicating with health and law enforcement officials. Whenstudents and parents express concerns about classroom instruction, leaders engage with standardized teachers (insimulation) to focus on instructional quality. The thirteen simulations in this book address a broad range ofcomplex, but common issues that school leaders encounter through daily service in K-12 schools.This book provides school leader educators and professional development facilitators with all the informationnecessary to fully implement clinical simulations for school leader development. Included are chapters on theconcept of clinical simulations, training procedures for standardized individuals, logistical steps towardimplementation, and the documents necessary to successfully facilitate thirteen different clinical simulations.NOTE: This book is designed for school leader educators and school district professional development personnelwho intend to facilitate clinical simulations with cohorts of school leaders. School leaders who intend toparticipate in the actual simulations should consult the separate text: Clinical Simulations for School LeaderDevelopment: A Companion Manual for School Leaders.