With the close of last school year, I completed my 30th campaign in education. Each of those years has been filled with joy and sorrow, challenges and successes, ups and downs and a ton of stories worth sharing. My (True) Life in Education Thus Far will detail 30 or so of those stories. I hope you enjoy them as much as I enjoyed living (most) of them!
DOORSTOPS
DECEMBER 7, 2022
As an English teacher, I am required to love symbols. It is part of the job description.
As an administrator, I am required to respond to all kinds of requests in any given day. It is part of the job description.
Years ago, a good friend and I were serving as assistant principals at Regis Jesuit High School Girls Division. I like to think that we were effective assistant principals, but, to find out if we really were, one would have to talk to the staffs we served. Regardless, I know that we worked hard. We typically spent our days in response mode, dealing with whatever issues arose. That, I find, is very much the job of an administrator: reacting to shifting circumstances and reacting with something approximating grace.
One of the truths of administrative work is that one often deals with people who are angry. Schools are human systems and human beings do not always treat one another well. Human beings also sometimes take exception to administrative decision making or they assume one thing about a situation when the truth is something else entirely. One of the jobs of the administrator is to step into these kinds of interactions and make them better.
It is not always easy.
My good friend received an email one afternoon from a staff member who, it was clear from the tone of the email (sometimes a fraught thing to judge, but not at all in this case) was irate with our administration and this staff member had chosen my friend to be the vehicle through which displeasure would be expressed. A meeting was demanded. A meeting was scheduled. My friend and I spoke throughout the day about what we could have done to upset this person so deeply. We worried. We fretted. We strategized.
The meeting came at the end of the day. I waited in my office for the story. What could have possibly angered this staff member so much?
The meeting was short. The staff member exited my friend’s office.
I was on the person’s heels, eager to know.
“Doorstops.” My friend said. “We don’t supply doorstops.”
The person was livid that the school had not purchased doorstops for every door in the building. This person felt incredibly disrespected when it was suggested that a doorstop could be bought at a Home Depot or Target. The level of disrespect that showed was, apparently, immense.
One never knows what will be the straw for someone. One never knows what breaks the camel’s back. But a doorstop? That was surprising.
The doorstop became a symbol. Doorstops represented those issues that force people to their breaking points, and beyond. “Is this a doorstop?” we would ask one another when taking on issues with the faculty and staff. One never knew where the doorstops were, after all.
This is why, when my friend left his role in admin to return, full time, to the classroom, I presented him with the “Golden Doorstop Award.”
I do hope he still has it.
