1996 - Administration, Here I Come!

My brother said, "If you are going to be in a job all your life, why wouldn't try to make the most money at it that you can?"


Good Question!


I had been working as a teacher since the 70's. I loved it but was not really going anywhere. If you know what I mean. Every beginning of every school year, some teachers actually even put up the same bulletin boards! I began to feel the need to change. I loved the kids. Loved The Kids! But each year, the months passed by and each year, my friends got more and more negative about the work. I found myself not wanting to go to work either at times. I knew that something had to change! I did not want to spend my days being negative.

It started with a sabbatical from my job...the opportunity to go back to school full time to pursue something in education as long as I committed to return to the district and stay for 3 years. Done deal! And there I was a full time college student again. This time getting certification for administration. Less then one year later, I was an intern assistant principal in an elementary school where I had taught. The following fall, I was the Assistant Principal there!

What I came in with was a desire to see the negative feelings go away from the staff. So I tried my hand at Symbolic Leadership. I told stories, had them tell stories and we wrote things down that we all believed in. We all knew that we believed in kids!

This first fall, we sailed off on the journey together, sharing things that we valued on gold paper coins and dropping them into a treasure box. We stayed focused through symbolic links to our ship and had fun...

... accept for one staff meeting right before winter break when I came in ready to finish up the work on the vision/mission statements and some of the teachers felt the meeting should have been a Christmas party instead. I had brought treats and planned the agenda to be quick and to the point but, in my mind, there still needed to be a meaningful outcome. It was the first time that I had a friend/teacher turn on me with a very clear question - "What is this shit? You should know better!"

Lesson learned - The staff meeting right before winter break is not the time to "keep pushing". Instead, it's a great opportunity to celebrate the accomplishments of the year so far instead!

I learned my lesson!