There are many people who have an influence on those who become school leaders. Probably toward the top of everyone’s list is a professor of education who imparted some key wisdom and/or inspiration as an administrative candidate first began their career journey.

Definitely one of the best of these is Ken Magdaleno, assistant professor in the School of Education and Human Development at California State University, Fresno. Magdaleno is also the director of the mentoring program for the California Association of Latino Superintendents and Administrators.

If anyone knows the ins and outs of K-12 school leadership it’s Magdaleno, since he’s a former elementary and middle grades principal, earning ACSA’s designation as Middle Grades Principal of the Year in 2004 when he was leading Anacapa Middle School in Ventura Unified School District.

In 2005, Magdaleno decided to switch gears and jump to the world of postsecondary education. His reasons for doing so were various, including a desire to be closer to an ill adult daughter in Clovis.

Meanwhile he was finishing his doctorate at UCLA, and that led him to another realization.

“One of the things I discovered in my time at UCLA was that I really wanted to become more of an activist in addressing the needs that I saw in education,” Magdaleno said. “Frankly, I felt as a principal and as someone working in the K-12 system that you often cannot be as vocal as perhaps I would have hoped to be. I really wanted to question and be an activist, primarily on behalf of Latino children, but really all children.

“To make a long story short, an opening became available at Fresno State and I was ultimately offered a tenure track professor position.”

As Magdaleno began working in higher education he found that did not mean stepping very far away from the world of K-12. His doctoral dissertation at UCLA had been on developing a mentoring program for Latino administrators, which led to his developing the mentoring program for CALSA. With this background, he soon found himself working with Fresno USD in coaching and mentoring some of their school leaders.

“(Fresno USD Superintendent) Mike Hanson and I had a conversation about the importance of supporting the group of leaders that I was teaching at Fresno State,” Magdaleno said. “And based on the success of the CALSA program, we developed an administrator mentoring program for Fresno Unified. This past year we had 32 first- and second-year principals being mentored by former Fresno Unified administrators who had been chosen by the superintendent.”

Magdaleno seems to have found a calling in developing mentoring programs. His dissertation research had involved talking to superintendents and assistant superintendents throughout the state, and a recurring point was the need for such a structured support program that offered leaders a safe haven.

“You have to be able to give people the opportunity to say, ‘I don’t know’ in a safe place,” Magdaleno said. “It has to be a place where they’re not talking to a supervisor or feeling judged. What’s really important about mentoring is it gives administrators the opportunity to ask the questions, when they don’t know, in a confidential arena.”

With all his work experience, Magdaleno knows how important that can be. “I was a high school counselor, elementary principal and middle school principal,” he said. “And I understand that it can sometimes be an isolated position. It’s very lonely. Sometimes you just have to have someone to talk to.

“If you’re a principal who wants to change the way the school has been doing things, sometimes people will question you and test you and want to revert back to the old ways. And you need to be able to meet with a mentor who can let you know the landmines you need to be aware of, what can happen when you get into certain kinds of situations.”

Having already received one Administrator of the Year Award, this one came as a complete surprise to Magdaleno.

“When I first heard I’d won an award at the region level, I was walking down the hall at the university and someone called my name out and said congratulations,” he said. “My question was, ‘For what?’ They said I had just been named regional Professor of Education of the Year, and I didn’t even know that I’d been nominated! And when I received the state award I was surprised again. Being honored once was fantastic. Being honored twice is extra special!”

Serving as an exclamation point to all this, Magdaleno was off after this interview to attend a high school graduation ceremony in his old Ventura stomping grounds.

“One of my elementary and middle school students named me as the most influential adult in her journey thus far and invited me to come down to her graduation,” he said. “Those are the paybacks, and you don’t get many in this profession.”

Each of ACSA’s 19 job-specific 2009 Administrators of the Year will be featured in EdCal through Nov. 2. They will be formally honored at ACSA’s Leadership Summit, Nov. 5-7 in Sacramento. To register for the event, visit www.acsa.org/leadershipsummit  or call the ACSA Educational Services Department at (800) 608-ACSA.