The Search is On

(I began this post some time ago and never got around to posting it - until now)

There will be a lot of changes this year. This month our new superintendent took over. Now we will be looking for a new principal.

Though I have not always agreed with everything our former principal did, he was always personable and kind. I will miss that.

I’ll never forget that he went out of his way to attend my father’s funeral. That was just the sort of school leader he was.

I think the frustration that I had with the former principal was simply that he was a laid back guy - like me. He ran the school the same way I ran my classroom. His famous phrase was “I’m not going to asshole kids.” Meaning that he wasn’t going to yell and scream all the time and hassle them. And that was the attitude of the whole administration.

That sounds like me a lot of time in the classroom.

But the problem for me arose when I reached my limit with a kid and sent them out, I wanted the administration to deal with the student differently than I did. I wanted the administration to put the smack down. But they just weren’t about that.

And it caused a lot of friction - call me old school but when a kid says ‘fuck you’ to a teacher, I’m all for putting the smack down. But that just didn’t happen.

Thus, I criticized a lot of what they did. Though, I was never alone in that criticism.

But it was their school, and they ran it how they saw fit. And 90% of the time, things were great. But that 10% when staff were disgruntled. Well, that led to a lot of friction.

What else I really admired about our former commander in chief was that he gave us pretty much total autonomy in our classrooms. He trusted us to be professionals and gave us the room to act like it.

Of course, the trouble for many staff arose when some abused this policy. Some left early. Some came late. Some defied school policies. And so on.

But that is the downside of a laissaize fair approach. However, it was nice knowing that I was trusted as a professional and left to do what I thought was best with my classroom and students.

I’ll miss that.