Madam Admin

This piece is about my recent admin from school year 2023-2024, memory still fresh and steaming.

         On a personal level she could be pleasant but as a professional, Madam Admin had never managed staff or run a school building .

         In schools across the land students show up, many not ready for the rigorous academics that is education in 2024. Nonetheless, the teachers job is to keep students learning while holding them accountable for bad behavior choices. Strategies include using consistently, a behavior management plan. In general and based on my 30 plus years of experience, a good discipline policy allows students who make a poor behavior choice a couple of calm warnings and chances to make a better choice. If the bad choice continues, the student should be removed from the situation, required to process behavior, make a plan for a better choice, have an appropriate consequence like an apology and asap, get back to learning. Bad behavior that continually violates others right to education should be unacceptable. We don’t get mad and do seek to honor the miscreant’s dignity but, no, no thank you.

         Much nuance, skill, rewarding good behavior choices and leveraging relationships goes into the art of classroom management. Unfortunately student behavior can often be so disruptive that learning becomes a challenge. The behavior becomes a violation of others right to learn and teachers, to teach. All you teachers out there recognize this truth:  A supportive admin knows that teacher working conditions are student learning conditions.

        A teacher I worked with last year had a student who had low reading skills. When this student became frustrated he would begin to repeatedly bang his head on his desk. Totally distracting for all others, no learning was happening during the head banging, the aide was often absent, any teacher at this point needs support. The student needed counseling and while teachers often counsel, we are not therapists.

        The teacher appealed to Madam Admin for help. The response was like, “What can you change about your classroom management so this doesn’t happen again?” and “How can you work on your relationship with this kid so they will behave?”

        She told me the same BS.

        As PE teacher I had a few students who regularly became physical with others, pushing, shoving, hitting. We hesitate to describe a child in this way but they were violent. There were a small number who refused to follow basic instructions given in a calm respectful voice. One kid threw a hard rubber football right at my face, just missed, could have broken my glasses and hit me in the eye.  Student behavior caused PE class to be unsafe.

         I reported this behavior and Madam Admin did not even acknowledge that I could have lost an eye. Instead she launched into a non-sequitur about how, in her last school, the PE teacher “Ran the gym with 40 students and he didn’t need an aide and never sent students on a timeout. “ And, “How can you build relationship so this boy doesn’t lose control?” 

         Sorry but schools are clones of each other. Whatever her old school was like did not apply  and not supporting my work and safety was shockingly negligent.

        Madam Admin failed to complete the basic work of promoting a building wide discipline system. Finally, in February, the school year over halfway done, feeling the pushback from staff, she held a meeting to review her plan. In February. It’s like if a new business waited several months after opening to explain sale policies to staff. They’d be out of business.

        Madam Admin passed out a chart of student bad behaviors organized by severity. The chart and her presentation seemed to suggest that disruptive behaviors were not so bad and could be handled if only we teachers had good classroom management. There was no building wide policy, only a “Whatever works in your room” approach. Truly bad behavior was to be addressed by a timeout in the office and offenders completing a reflection sheet answering a series of guiding questions around behavior choices, followed by a phone call to parents explaining what happened. However, Madam Admin or support staff would not be helping with any of this. Teachers themselves were to guide students in completing the reflection sheet and communicating with often disgruntled parents. She failed to grasp that the reflection sheet was very time consuming, time being a resource something that teachers don’t have.

      The reflection process with guiding questions in response to bad behavior choices is good practice.  But, were teachers supposed to get someone to cover their class, during class, while they sat down with the miscreant? Maybe after school? During lunch or recess?

      We all sat through the meeting trying to process her half-baked initiative. Everybody was too bewildered to react. Once the meeting ended, in Madam Admin’s mind the question was settled. Yeah. She had done her job.

      Us teachers think she may have been on the spectrum. This is not a human fault or defect. The leadership shortcoming is the rigid, linear thinking in the people business of education. We learned to handle Madam Admin by placating, avoiding, bypassing and humoring her. All the while trying to make sense of her disconnected leadership style. Once you realize the boss is a Butter Knife, outwitting such people is not hard.

      The problem was that us teachers, instead of talking about student needs and sharing ideas on best teaching practice, we spent our time and energy discussing how to survive and outwit Bad Madam Admin. Sadly, when an admin is incompetent their crappy management becomes the focus, not the professional work of serving students. Tell such bosses what they want to hear, avoid, bypass and attend to kids best you can when there is little assistance from above.

      This is one example of the many unclear expectations and ill-considered plans that were the hallmark of Madam Admin. She moved on after two years and the school is under new management.