This paper aims to identify effective school leadership and management practices during a crisis period. We define crisis as a change of great intensity which produces a school operation imbalance within the organization and with its surrounding environment. We are particularly concerned about those practices that allow coping with the context of adversity and keeping normal operation. In order to identify those practices, we conducted a case study of two high schools that were highly affected by the Chilean massive earthquake on February 2010, the sixth largest in the world ever recorded. These schools were monitored for four years using mixed methods, including interviews, focus groups, surveys, projective techniques and secondary information review. As a result, we identify three main effective strategies: a) ensuring a focus on pedagogy despite all the other concerns; b) empowering others to distribute leadership and spread the school community support, promoting wider participation of the entire school community including parents and students; and c) ensuring permanent formal communication to the entire community in order to reduce anxiety and avoid misunderstandings. Additionally, when available, it is important to be open for external support despite the risk of showing internal weaknesses.