Examining successful school principals can contribute to the efforts of developing new leadership models and management strategies specific to the education system. This study focuses on the practices of a school principal who enhanced the performance of a school with low academic achievement in a remarkable way in a few years. The participants of this case study were a school principal and three teachers, and the research data were analyzed thematically. The school principal was observed to exhibit certain patterns of effective behavior to ensure the success of the school. It was found that the principal had strong personal values and believed that students could learn, established a system that enabled students to learn at school, focused on academic goals, recognized school stakeholders and included them in student learning processes, developed a school culture based on trust and implemented practices that closely followed and evaluated their learning.