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!
MAKING UP STORIES TO HELP!
January 11, 2023
Serving as an administrator in the later part of my career has been a wonderful experience. I have suggested since I first received my initial administrative position as Dean of Students at Regis Jesuit HIgh School Girls Division that the role of an administrator is to support the adults so that the adults can support the students.
I still believe that. Strongly.
Moreover, I hope that I do that – that I provide for the faculty and staff a foundation of support that enables them to do their work, to support our students, to feel safe and secure in their vocation. That is the first responsibility I currently hold as principal of Mullen High School.
Over the years in these administrative roles, I have interfaced with teachers and coaches and staff members in all kinds of different situations and scenarios, the overwhelming majority of which have been wonderful. There have been some, however, that have been more challenging.
Here is the truth: sometimes adults do inexplicable things. I choose that word intentionally. There are times that adults with whom I have worked have done things that simply defy – in my mind – rational explanation.
There was the time a teacher lost control of his class and he simply turned them loose into the hallways. There was the time a teacher who was on a remediation plan read her remediation plan to her class. There was the time a teacher took his class on a field trip without telling the administration he was going. There was the time… okay, you get the picture. Sometimes people do inexplicable things.
When that happens and when the stakes are not particularly high in that there does not need to be some corrective action taken or some significant personnel lesson imparted, I find myself doing something that, perhaps, I should not do.
I find myself making up stories.
It seems to me that, when a teacher or staff member feels embarrassed by a bad decision, a mistake or an inexplicable lack of judgment, I can turn down the temperature. I can help. I can do this by suggesting I have made the same or a similar mistake.
The first example of this which I can remember of doing this in my career is, perhaps, the best. A young teacher came to me and to my good friend who was also an administrator and confessed she had lost a complete set of final exams. Lost. Gone. A full set of finals.
My friend and I looked at each other. We took deep breaths. We gave advice.
At some point, one of us said: “when I lost a full set of exams…” and we were off and running.
She felt immeasurably better and we felt we had helped her. No lasting educational harm done.
When she left my friend’s office, we looked at each other and smiled.
Neither of us had ever lost a set of exams.
Sometimes, stretching the truth is a good thing to do. It is supportive. It makes a situation better.