Pitfalls of Rookie Administrators

A week of school has come and gone.  Across the state and nation teachers and kids are learning to live with the expectations and personalities of new administrators.  I have watched this phenomenon for a long time and sadly it appears that most university courses really do not prepare anyone to be an administrator in a public school, else wise the problems listed below would not occur.  A quick Google search for “first year teachers” yields about 155 million hits.  A search for “first year administrators” yields less than half that many and most of those seem to be about how administrators can help first year teachers.  Clearly, someone needs to talk about first year administrators. 

Sadly, there are few first year administrator mentorship programs, but there should be.  The change from classroom to front office is dramatic and can be traumatic.  First year administrators need a lot of coaching and support.  From my point of view there are distinct behaviors that proclaim to the world that this person is a rookie public school administrator and may be doing more harm than good.  Here is my list, not exhaustive and not in any particular order, but a list none the less of observed rookie behaviors in need of coaching and mentoring.

“When I taught…”

A teacher leaves the classroom in June and arrives in August as an administrator.  This change in roles is huge.  As a teacher one has a support group, fellow complainers, and a sense of belonging, confidence and expertise.  As a first year administrator all of that is gone.  I remember walking into the teachers’ lounge as a teacher and I was warmly greeted and quickly brought up to speed on the latest gossip.  When I walked into the teachers’ lounge as a first year principal all conversation stopped.  It hurt.  I found my name written on bathroom walls for the first time in less than flattering terms.  The temptation of a first year administrator is to return to that teacher support group with tales of what one did as a teacher, how one handled discipline, etc. as a teacher, yadda, yadda, yadda.  First year administrators do not get it that they are not a teacher and teachers know that.  Every reference to what one did as teacher will result in eye rolls and eventual alienation.  (The same can be said for experienced administrators who change districts and spend all their time talking about how things were done in their previous district.)  An administrator has a different point of view and a different set of responsibilities.  He or she is not a teacher any more.  The trick is to develop a new support group of fellow administrators rather than attempting to rejoin the ranks of teachers.

“Because I said so.”

A rookie will feel the need to establish his or her power base if they are insecure, and typically they do so in absolutely the wrong way.  Everyone knows who the administrators are and everyone knows the responsibilities of that position.  But if a rookie is insecure about their “power”, he or she will find someone in the organizational structure and order them to do something, “Because I say so,” or some other lame excuse.  Such phrases may make sense with children who lack the life experience and knowledge to understand the logic of a rule.  That is never true for professionally degreed, certified adults.  Asking people to do their jobs is not pulling rank.  Arbitrarily insisting it be done your way or the highway is, and denotes a rookie.  Mature administrators know that everyone in the organization can contribute, have insight and ideas and it is never wise to limit thinking to just one person.  That is a total waste of resources and guarantees poor decisions.  Peter Senge talks about the myth of “I am my position.”  This is a real trap for first year administrators who awake one day knowing they now have structural power because of their position.  Rookies can undermine that power in a hurry by exercising it in the wrong ways.  A much better approach is to recognize that everyone has a job to do, we are all humans, and we must work together to accomplish our mission.  Listening is a key skill.

“Everyone sit down and be quiet!”

Clearly one of our challenges is to maintain student safety and order.  And, clearly we are outnumbered.  When a rule is broken the easiest way out is to punish the whole bus, but that is a rookie response.  If a student misbehaves it is our job to identify the culprit and respond appropriately to that individual.  To tell the whole bus they must not talk punishes kids who were not a problem; punishes kids who were behaving.  Such a strategy totally undermines whatever authority an administrator may have.  This response is especially heinous if we are talking about adults.  Addressing a problem via an announcement at a faculty meeting or via email when the issue lies with only one or two employees sends the message I do not have the courage to talk with you one on one.  It takes courage to lead.  It takes the courage to go to one kid or one employee, tell them what they are doing wrong and determine consequences.  Arbitrarily requiring the entire group to bear the brunt of the punishment may get compliance, but it will not get respect.

“Be loyal to me.  I am your boss.”

All adults in public education are employed by tax dollars to better the lives of the children in their care.  We do so in a variety of ways, but our mission, our reason for being is to promote growth and improvement in our children.  Any other mission is self-centered and/or off target.  Mature administrators will want staff loyal to that mission, rather than loyal to some person on the organizational chart.  It would scare me to death to think that fellow professionals would not be committed to our mission rather than committed to me.  Yes, experienced administrators want loyalty, but loyalty to a mission not a person.  A mission is grand and all encompassing.  Every person has flaws.  If staff is not loyal to the mission then the administrator is set up to become another emperor walking around naked.  The very people perceived to be disloyal may the ones that the administrator can learn from the most.

“You Owe Me.”

Frequently there is a temptation on the part of rookies to develop staff indentured servants.  A rookie can do this by simply saying “you owe me.”  Once the building is full of people that owe the administrator then it seems to the rookie that their power has increased.  That is so not true.  The barter system and indentured servitude went away for a reason.  I think it is unethical for an administrator to perform a function that is part of his or her job and then somehow imply another staff member is indebted to them.  If that same rookie is doing something he or she should not do, then that is also cause for alarm.  If that same rookie is doing something he or she would not do for every employee then that again is cause for alarm.  It is no more reasonable for an administrator to say, “You owe me” than it is for a teacher to say the same to an administrator regarding teaching each day.  Not only is this unethical, it can breed a covey of favorites; staff that everyone knows the administrator favors over others.  Such favorites will be undermined by others as will the administrator for creating them.  Nobody owes anybody for doing our jobs.  Our communities pay us to do that with their tax dollars.  Serve those with whom you work rather than seek their indebtedness.

“No.”

I believe the biggest temptation on the part of a rookie administrator is to simply say “no.”  A teacher needs understanding today for a sick relative.  Just say no.  A parent needs understanding today for a sick kid.  Just say no.  A sister is getting married out of state.  Just say no.  The authority to say no is inherent in an administrative role.  Every time an administrator responds to a request with a “no” he or she sends a little arrow to the heart of the person who asked.  Every time an administrator says “yes” or seeks to help create the solution the employee seeks, the administrator grows in stature in the eyes of the employee, or parent, or kid.  Clearly, an administrator cannot say yes to every request.  But to say no to most if not all requests for special consideration is in the rookie domain.  Do no harm.  Help people.

“Please read this.”

I will never forget my excitement when I saw school letterhead with my name on it.  Wow.  There it was:  “Bob Wells, Assistant Principal.”  Seeing that enhanced typeface on heavy bond paper I felt ensconced in the position for life.  Ha.  That was in 1983.  Now that I had letterhead surely I am expected to write something on it.  How about a memo to teachers regarding cafeteria duty, or bus duty, or students running in the halls, or counting textbooks?  I could think of a jillion memos to write.  The temptation got worse when schools developed the infrastructure for emails.  Now I can really bombard staff with stuff.  I could require them to read my daily dribble.  I could even send quotations from my favorite holy book, my favorite politician, my favorite philosopher, my favorite TV shows, etc.  Further, I can always claim in light of future calamities that I sent the needed information and directions to the employees and they failed to read such.  I am covered.  I am a rookie and need to be covered.  In reality, management by memo is terrible.  If you love the state and federal school guidelines then you may love local memo management.  Politicians have yet to figure out that sending us a memo does not cause change, or improvement, or anything other than resentment and a loss of respect for the sender of such fodder.  Mature administrators know real change, real improvement, occurs face-to-face with fellow professionals who are treated like professionals and are more than an inbox.  They are heard.  If a culture is established wherein all dictates and knowledge roll downhill, then students will fail as they are at the bottom of the hill.

“It is not my fault.”

The hardest rookie tendency to overcome is the defending perfection tendency.  For the sake of discussion let’s say administrators fall into one of two categories:  pursuing improvement or defending perfection.  If I already know everything, understand everything, and can foresee everything then all my decisions are perfect.  If something goes wrong, I must defend my decisions against whomever it is that is flawed and messed up my decision.  I must seek them out to clearly establish blame as Lord knows it could not be on me.  Failure must be someone else’s fault.  On the other hand, if I recognize that everyone is flawed and I want to promote a learning culture where everyone improves professionally each year then I must model the pursuit of improvement.  Such pursuit is a totally different mindset than defending.  It does not take long to identify the defenders and the pursuers.  Pursuers are reading, they are writing, they are learning.  They are engaged with other professionals seeking better and better ways to promote successful schooling.  Defenders will not try.  They will gather with others who think like they think and perceive the rest of the world as something they must defend against.  Such a mindset on the part of a so-called educator is pitiful.

When rookies do any of the above, or all, they totally undermine the professional culture of the school.  Private sector folks simply do not get this.  They seem to reward many of what I call rookie attributes, but that is because the boss or CEO is responsible for whatever widget is being produced and the boss or CEO likely does know more than the guys on the line.  None of that is true in education.  We cannot fire our kids.  They are the ones who must perform.  Teachers do all that they can to promote that performance, but teachers need support in an atmosphere of safety, honesty and mutual support just as kids do.  Undo those things and teachers beat a path to their classrooms and keep their heads down.  That is not a formula for success.  The last thing a public school administrator should be is top-down, my-way or the highway, or scary to staff.

The saddest observations I make are of the folks who are no longer rookies but continue to make rookie mistakes.  Just as I know teachers with 20 years experience who have repeated their first year experience over 20 years, I know administrators with 20 years experience who have done the same, both sets of behavior are tragic and near criminal in my mind.

I do not know what percentage of teachers work with new administrators each year.  I am guessing it is pretty high, maybe 50%.  Whether your new administrator is a superintendent, a principal or an assistant principal you are going to feel the cultural impact of his or her leadership.  My prayer for each of you is that they have either pursued improvement each year and are way beyond the rookie mistakes listed above, or they are just starting out and can learn at the feet of a good mentor.  It is not about power.  It is about service.

Regardless, I wish you all the best this year as you either break in a new administrator or get broken in as a new administrator.  As for me, kids will always be more important than adult egos.

School Calendars and Staff Development

In Texas most school districts required teachers to report for duty on Monday, August 18 officially ending the summer of 2014.  Some districts required teachers to report the previous week, and others may wait until later in the week, but kids will most likely show up on August 25, so most teachers report a week early.  Why?  Depends on who one asks.

One of the lurking, unspoken problems in public education is the shut-down and start-up time we waste each year.  As we approach the end of a school year, textbooks, technological equipment, room keys, library materials, etc., etc. all must be accounted for and turned in.  And since as a teacher one cannot turn in all that stuff if you are still using it to teach, once you start turning in stuff teaching stops.  Grades are due before the end of the year, so once the grades are finalized why teach?  So the last week or so of school each year is shut-down time when everything gets turned in, stuff comes off all the classroom walls, teaching stops, and school fun days, field days, and field trips begin. 

The opposite happens at the beginning of each school year.  Teachers arrive in a classroom, perhaps not the same one they had the previous year, and they feel obligated to put stuff on walls.  Borders, posters, fire exit maps, propaganda promoting their curriculum, football schedules, etc., must be up, and that takes time.  Everything the teachers turned in at the end of the year must be checked back out.  That takes time.  Schedules must be run, opening day procedures must be described and lesson plans must be written.  Plus, administrators everywhere are just jerking to sit all their teachers in a room as a captive audience and tell them stuff teachers do not care about, build a team that does not and will never exist, and attempt to convince teachers that administrators are human beings so that about October when the rubber meets the road teachers will hopefully remember that this administrator has a sense of humor, or at least he or she did in August. 

No other major operation I know spends so much time shutting down and starting up each year as schools.  We lose at least 1 week of instruction at the beginning of each year and at least 1 week of instruction at the end of each year just literally and figuratively putting stuff up or taking stuff down.  Hospitals do not do that.  The local hardware store does not do that.  Even the local church does not do that.  Only schools define that each year must have 180 days of instruction then plan in ways to make sure that we use only about 170 of those days.  Add to those days all the required testing days, and all the days the district will want to do sample tests to see how kids will do on the real tests, then we are probably looking at another 2 weeks or more of wasted days depending on the grade level and subject.  If you think a 180 day school year is a good thing, then realize given the current structure kids are likely getting only about 160 or 155 days.  Subtract pep rally schedules, county fairs, etc., and the year looks shorter and shorter.  Subtract all the days that various teams must leave school early to compete somewhere and the school year is really short.

(It is of course really terrible for high school seniors as there is a perpetrated myth afoot promoted by parents and kids that seniors should not have to do anything, or at least anything that might require their brains, at the end of the year.  No one expects seniors to attend school on the day of their prom.  No one expects seniors to attend school after grades are submitted and class rank is determined.  School is the only place where with wisdom, experience, knowledge and age we argue that responsibility should decline if not disappear.  It is the reverse logic of tenure; it is the reverse logic of pay schedules based on years of experience.  And yet, it persists for reasons beyond my kin.  Of course letting seniors off the hook when they are on the verge of leaving the nest makes absolutely no sense at all.  But, I digress.)

So, teachers work 187 days.  Kids are in school roughly 180 days.  Teachers will work 7 days when kids are not there.  Many of these days are booked early in the year so that teachers may engage in startup exercises and administrators may engage in dog and pony and procedural shows.  So while teachers are preoccupied with getting their rooms ready and their instruction ready administrators hold them captive to discuss such esoteric topics as bell schedules, safety drills, opening day procedures, handbooks, textbooks and lockers.  Worse, administrators are charged with implementing training on a host of topics mandated by the Legislature like blood borne pathogens, mental health intervention, suicide prevention, sexual abuse, and may include technology, conflict resolution, discipline strategies, and bullying. 

Therefore, why teachers are at work a week or so before the kids return depends on whom one asks.  Ask the Legislature, and they will roll out the list of all the required trainings.  Ask the district administrators and they will roll out the list of all the required local processes and procedural trainings that must be accomplished.  Ask the teachers and they will tell you they need that time to get ready to teach, not just in setting up the classroom, but in reviewing new curricula standards, new test expectations, new instructional materials, etc., etc.  When the bell rings on Monday morning, August 25, teachers will not remember the required trainings but they will cuss those meetings that kept them from getting ready for kids.

Of all the events that happen in the week or so before school, the one that has always amazed me is the notion of a “convocation”, that is a formal meeting of a large group of people.  Many districts schedule such a meeting where the entire group of employees gathers under one roof.  I believe more than not the theory is the superintendent must tell the employees why they are here and what they need to do in the coming year, or someone has to motivate them to do their jobs.  Such motivation comes from hired speakers or multi-media presentations.  I scoff.  Such events are not nor have they ever been for teachers.  They exist to communicate that the system is one system and we are all in this together.  I believe that is true, but I believe it is not practiced at any time other than convocations therefore rendering the purpose of the event moot.  If the thought of 20 warm bodies showing up in his or her classroom on Monday does not motivate a teacher to perform then nothing will.  In my career I have heard dozens and dozens of motivational speeches.  I not only cannot name but a few, I cannot name any that significantly changed my professional practice.

So, how do we fix this?  How do we connect school calendars and staff development in a way that is meaningful and purposeful?  I have two ideas, either of which would work I think and none of which would not likely be very popular.

First, we could change all teacher contracts from 10 month to 12 month contracts.  If teachers worked year-round there would be no need to take down and start up each year and the summers could be spent in planning, staff development, and enhancing instruction.  Everyone would be more than ready.  Such a proposal would cost money.  At an average teacher salary of $50,000 for 187 days of teaching, increasing the salary to 226 days would cost $10,413 per teacher, or about $1 million dollars for every 100 teachers.  Perhaps worse, such a proposal would be resisted by folks who like for teaching to include June, July and August.  I would argue that until teachers teach year round they will never garner the professional respect accrued by others.

The second way to do this is to structure the instructional day in entirely different ways.  If we doubled the number of teachers allowing each teacher to actually teach half the day and plan and engage in staff development the other half of the day, we would reap great rewards.  I suspect teachers would really like this approach.  This approach, however, is even more expensive.  It would double the current teacher salary budget.  Ouch.

It is difficult but very important to remember that staff development does not mean throwing required information at a faculty.  These folks are professionals and have their own sense of what it is they need to prepare and improve their instruction.

All of us in education have a problem seeing beyond our boundaries.  It is tough for a teacher to see the entire campus and the issues therein.  It is tough for a principal to do the same for an entire school district.  It is difficult for a board and a superintendent to recognize that public education is a state function not just a local function.  Continuing to find ways to broaden each perspective is a good thing.  Attempting to do so while teachers are frantically preparing for kids is just poor timing.

As I post this, Monday, August 25^th is right around the corner.  I wish all teachers a wonderful, productive school year and hope that you feel ready for the arrival of kids!  That is why we are here, after all.

Depression and Robin Williams

I am more of a George Carlin kind of guy, but the death of Robin Williams has really touched me.  He was depressed.  He committed suicide.  Funny, brilliant, hyper, and talented beyond belief he could not hold the internal cannibalistic beast at bay any longer and self-destructed.  So sad.  I do not know the link between depression and comedians, though I suspect there is one.  I do know the link between depression and addiction.  Williams suffered both, as do many others.  Depressed people will seek anything to ease the pain within.

An estimated 121 million people on planet earth suffer from depression, and 1 in 10 Americans suffer from depression at one point or another.  Suicide is the fourth leading cause of death in people between the ages of 18 and 65.  The folks who choose to end their lives do so because they are depressed.  There appears to be no way out.  There is no solace for the pain, no meds, no drugs, no alcohol, nothing that will ease the sense of worthlessness, of rejection, of abandonment, of failure.  Depressed people cannot simply “snap out of it.”  Depression is not a character flaw, it is a disease.  Depressed people are as likely to self-cure as cancer victims.  Depressed people control their feelings as much as they control the weather.  Dark skies descend and there is nothing that can be done save huddling inside.  People who do not suffer from depression simply do not get it.  For non-depressed people to judge and prescribe for depressed people is akin to white males talking about growing up as a black male in America.  Cannot be done.

Until very recently victims of depression hid their disease.  Many became the life of the party, the quick wits, the consistently jolly and publicly positive.  All of that is a mask.  Many simply hibernated and avoided contact with others for fear they will encounter more rejection, more pain, more failure.  Recently, those who suffer from depression are coming out, letting the world know they are depressed, they are fighting it, and they intend to win.  Such coming out is very scary.  For every person who knows about and understands depression there are dozens of others who fear it, who perceive it as a personality disorder or a character weakness.  Admitting to the world that you are depressed sets you up for even more judgment, more rejection, and more pain. 

I “came out” in September of 2012 and confessed my disease.  I believe it contributed to the end of my tenure as superintendent.  I do not know that for sure, but those feelings at least are consistent with the attributes of depression.  Like many other depressed folks I do not think many knew I suffered from depression and have suffered from depression since my first serious bout in high school.  I functioned.  I performed.  I was publicly successful.  I happen to think that many school superintendents suffer from depression.  It was with the announcement that I was depressed that those of narrow minds and little understanding gave up on me.  Rejecting a depressed person is like handing a cigarette to someone with lung cancer.  I find it almost funny that during the times of my most severe depression I was considered most successful.  When I shared that I was depressed I was in a better place than many other times.  If I had cancer I suspect I would still be superintendent.  If I had a heart attack I suspect I would still be superintendent.  But I suffer from depression.  My advice to other school administrators who suffer from depression is to continue to hide it.  You may confess that you are diabetic, or have COPD, or have cancer, or have high blood pressure, or are obese, or any other ailment that is perceived to be beyond your control.  But to confess to the disease of depression can be a career ending event.

Robin Williams suffered from depression.  Only a very few closest to him new that he was depressed.  No one would have guessed watching him perform.  Robin Williams has now escaped the pain.  I get it.

RIP Robin Williams.  You amazed me and made me laugh, and now you break my heart.