About two weeks ago an administrator in Hillsborough County got picked up on a DUI charge. Sad.
His age was listed at 31 years old.
It got me to thinking: graduate high school at 18, graduate college at 22, 9 years to go from teaching to Student Affairs A.P. to Assistant Principal (Administration or Curriculum).
My point: Do you think this person spent 5 years in the classroom? Consider your first 5 years in the classroom. What kind of experience and skills did you acquire? Yet this person will have 30+ years of school/classroom influence.
Why does the district do this?
Is 5 years enough to understand the true classroom consequences of your decisions?
I've worked with some talented young administrators who displayed extraordinary common sense, energy, and insight. They were few and far between. Most were just looking for a way out of the classroom and without the mentoring of a strong leader it was a frustrating and often demoralizing experience.
Too many managers - not enough leaders.
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5 comments:
I can feel the pain you feel as you write this. Frustration, fatigue and hopeless. The truly amazing thing, the thing I find most perplexing is that after a break of 8 or 9 weeks you will go back and do it all over again.
The bosses downtown know that so they don't really worry. There will plenty of you going back to the trenches.
Not me, I'm done. 16 years and out.
bye
Of course we have some very good young educators go into administraion. However, how many times do we see teachers who can't cut it in the classroom move up and out as fast as they can! These are usually the AP 1's who like to tell you how to do your job in the classroom. These are the young AP's who feel their job is to discipline teachers instead of students.
At my work site we had a teacher who constantly would leave during the school day to head to Chick-Fil-A during his classes. He would tell his students to disappear into the halls or to go hang out in other rooms. These students would fill the halls and disrupt other classes. After many many complaints from our staff, said teacher was rewarded with an AP 1 position.
Here is another from a popular south tampa high school:
A teacher who consistanly can't get to school before 3rd period while having his hallmates cover both his homeroom AND 1st period gets moved up the ladder quickly after two years of sleeping late. Another fresh AP 1 after three years of classroom mismanagement!
Speaking only for myself Tom, call me nuts.
There is a renewal that occurs over those 8 to 9 weeks.
A good percentage of the student population "turns over" ( and sometimes coworkers too) providing that "fresh start" that is so critical.
I guess I still find the reason to believe and, yes, ROSSAC counts on this. That, and I hang on to the lifeline thrown to me by the minuscule percentage of students that care about what I do for them - if I didn't I'm not sure what I'd do.
The culmination of 6 periods, SpringBoard, and stress are taking its toll. I've never been a "quitter" but my time to move on feels close.
Whatever you do, wherever you go, know you gave it your best.
Stay in touch. Suzie
Goader's coming back. Check out his blog.
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