As I walked down the hallway to help facilitate the fleeing we call dismissal, a 1st grader stopped me. “Hey, Mrs. Morrison, did you sleep last night?” When I answered yes, he shook his head with pity. “You sure do look tired.” This 6-year-old easily tapped into my fatigue. And it was only my sixth week as a new assistant principal.
That night, I reflected on what was happening to me. Was it the eight referrals that landed on my desk before 9:00 a.m.? Was it the emotional strain of kids telling me they were beaten? Or of parents telling me they had to take their child off needed medication because they had no health insurance? The weekly fights among students? The parents calling to complain about teachers not doing their jobs? The TV news vans incorrectly reporting live that we had a poisonous spill on site while the school principal was gone? The pang of loneliness I felt as I watched all the teachers go out to lunch on staff development day?
Over and over, I have heard that your first year as an assistant principal is all about survival. That is a lie. Survival covers only the day-to-day tasks that pile up on an administrator's desk. Meanwhile, you are trying to raise test scores, improve classroom instruction, and foster a positive school climate. You are trying to save children who you will soon find out are trying to survive a whole lot harder than you are.
I believe many teachers go into administration because they want a challenge. Having been effective in the classroom, they envision having a similar impact on a whole school. These teachers are willing to fight for their students, will pull all-nighters if necessary, and will not rest until they are sure students have reached the highest achievement possible. These are the people we need as administrators—those who approach the job with passion. But schools must learn how to better support and retain these new administrators.
During my first month on the job at an urban K–8 school of approximately 550 students in Cincinnati, Ohio, I learned most of what I really needed to know through trial by fire. I found myself questioning how my training could have better prepared me to deal with my daily challenges.
Bringing Theory Into the Trenches
Few of the roughly 15 different classes I took to complete my Master of Educational Administration degree truly prepared me for the weighty realities of running a school. Many courses stressed that principals must have a plan for every situation, which must then be run by the school staff to ensure their buy-in. Then we were to monitor the success of this plan and make any necessary changes. I couldn't help believing that most people in my courses could have figured out this process for themselves. Now that I am in the thick of school administration, I wish we had dealt with hard realities, such as the fact that some teachers don't want to change and couldn't care less about any ideas you would like to share.
But there were classes that prepared me for the world I was hoping to enter. One professor stood at the front of the lecture hall and called out in his booming voice, “This is Channel 4 News reporting live outside of X High School where a teacher has just been arrested for molesting a student. Oh look, here is the principal now. Mrs. Morrison, can we have a comment?”
As my face flushed red in front of 50 classmates, I realized that I had been totally caught off-guard. In a real-world situation, I would have been speaking for the camera. These kinds of simulations, as close to real life as you can come without leaving the lecture hall, did the best job of preparing me.
So, what should preparatory programs do for wannabe administrators? Provide practice. Throw students in administrative training programs into situations where there is no other option than to think on their feet. Don't just teach future leaders how to evaluate teachers—teach them how to evaluate teachers who hate them. Teach philosophy, but practice applying the philosophy instantly to real-world dilemmas. Provide internships in schools that give administrative candidates opportunities to deal with tough situations and make difficult decisions.
Although I loved my internship, the experience was not representative of the challenges I would soon encounter. I completed many projects that consumed my required hours: I made a resource binder for increasing literacy across the curriculum, planned a successful career fair, and invoiced all the technology in the building. But I never had to make decisions or got to see behind the scenes. I did very well on my evaluations, probably because I was a good teacher. But we all know that good teachers do not necessarily make good administrators.
Interning principals must be welcomed into the trenches, given scenarios to resolve, and allowed to truly experience what administrators do in a normal day. Schools are often hesitant to give control to those just learning the trade, claiming, “There are kids' lives at stake; school management can't be handled by a rookie.” I say let the rookie handle it with some support, and we will have a much better-prepared crop of administrators entering our schools.
Providing Authentic Support
The kind of changes I recommend will not happen quickly in administrator preparatory programs, if they happen at all. So until such programs begin to add a real-life aspect to principal training, how can school districts better train and support new administrators?
Many school districts have programs in place to support new administrators, but such programs don't always provide the “safe place” to seek support that overwhelmed new principals badly need.
For example, I attend an assistant principals focus group with about 12 other administrators once a month. At these gatherings, veteran assistant principals pass along to newcomers such proven organizational resources as classroom checklists, bus monitoring forms, and telephone log sheets. Providing such resources saves time for new administrators and means that we do not waste energy reinventing the wheel. I gain insight and wisdom from these focus group sessions, along with the knowledge that it is possible to do this job. But this group is not the safe place to vent that it purports to be. We new assistant principals sit and discuss how our lives have changed. We talk about handling unhappy teachers. We describe how we deal with stress. And we all smile and say we are doing fine because, of course, the superintendent is sitting at the head of the table and we must show that we are handling whatever challenge we are facing better than any of our peers are handling theirs.
But I have found another group that does allow me to vent and to feel unconditional support. I meet several times a month with the two other new assistant principals in my district. We don't sit around a conference table. We go to restaurants that are far away from our schools where we can eat great food and enjoy unhurried service. We often choose places because of their great drink specials. The first hour involves telling stories from the last few weeks. We don't try to outdo one another in terms of who had the worst week: suspending a kid for trying to choke the life out of a security guard, putting the building in lockdown, or having a massive fight with the principal over walkie-talkies. We just listen—very closely. The situation someone else in the group describes may cross our own paths in the near future.
After this first hour comes the point where we all admit that we need help. The three of us identified our individual strengths so quickly that we instantly became mutually supportive. One of us has a knack for working with 7th and 8th graders, one of us gets along with the parents, and one of us is managing to stay organized. During these discussions we know it's OK to wonder aloud whether we made a mistake or to ponder the simplicity of going back to having our own classrooms where we were in total control. By the time our meeting is over, we feel reaffirmed that we can save the world—or at least make a few positive changes.
Districts should help those who have just entered the world of administration to create such natural support groups. Many districts assign each new administrator a mentor, but true mentoring doesn't always develop from such pairings. I currently have two mentors assigned to me. I am hoping it was not assumed that I needed that much extra guidance. The principal I currently work with is not one of these assigned mentors, yet she is the only person I truly go to for help. She answers my daily questions, sees my tears, praises my work, and listens to my fears.
It is crucial for districts to match new assistant principals with veteran leaders with whom they can develop a bond and reap the benefits of true mentoring. As a first step, schools should identify the personal and professional strengths and weaknesses of existing administrators. In hiring any additional administrator, they should not just look for the best candidate, but seek out the best candidate whose skills will complement the abilities of those already working in the school. Providing opportunities for rookie and veteran administrators to interact in a relaxed atmosphere away from the school will also help bonds form naturally.
Another key support for new principals is professional development away from the school. If one good idea is gained in a day of off-site professional development, then that is a day well spent. Although districts may worry that pulling administrators out of the building wastes valuable time, isn't it worth one day away from school to help foster a higher-functioning professional?
Although I remember feeling angry when I was pulled out of my school for training on teacher evaluations, these three sessions gave me confidence in my ability to complete this part of my job in a way that short after-school sessions could not have done.
This spring, I took time to revisit some of the trials of my first months on the job and consider how they helped me grow. Comparing my abilities now to what they were even six weeks ago, I am astonished at how my leadership skills and decision-making ability have grown. My trial by fire has been scary. But once I tapped into authentic sources of support, each fire I put out brought me confidence that I can do the job I've set out to do.
