(L) 1994 (R) 2018
It is my intention to share some reflections on the highs, the lows, the excitement, the routine, the successes, the failures and everything in between which I experience the course of the next 10 – 12 months, my first months as a full-time principal of a high school. Writing this journal will help me grow. Reading it may make you laugh…
27 | September | 2018
Parent/Teacher Conferences at my school are happening today. Over the course of the last two weeks, I have been involved in many a conversation about them, about their efficacy and about how we such structure them to encourage people to attend them.
There has been no shortage of opinions on this as you might imagine.
Following conversation, deliberation and reflection, I settled on a format that I thought was good, a message to families I thought conveyed what we wanted to convey and put that out to our community. And I did not hear very much in response.
But I did receive a couple concerns from parents which is a very good thing. Right?
When emails and messages go out, they reach, literally, thousands of people. To assume that everyone who reads them (not sure what that number is actually) is going to complete their perusal and say “yes, that’s exactly right; I agree completely” is ludicrous.
But I so want that to be!
I have said to faculty and staff and parents and students that I want feedback on the manner in which I am serving the school. I have said that in public and I have said it in writing and I continue to seek it out.
What I need to remember is that feedback is not always going to be what I would hope or what I wanted. Some of it will not agree with me. Some of it will be critical. I know this.
But, as I have told teachers many, many times in the past when they are going through student evaluations, feedback must be evaluated. Just because someone does not agree with you does not make them wrong. That is obvious.
I am more than ready to correct, concede, console. I am more than ready to resource and to find solutions. I am more than ready to change course.
Perhaps I am, sometimes, too ready.
When dealing with feedback, less obvious for me and who I am and want to be as a leader is just because someone disagrees with me does not make them right, either.
Too often – and more than a few times in the past week – I leap to correct whatever I have been critiqued about. Sometimes that is the right course. Often it is.
Sometimes, it is not.
Sometimes I know more. Sometimes I am right.
Admitting this is not always easy.