A Tribute to GRACE Leadership

It's a weird time in education these days.  Coming out of the pandemic, everyone is recovering from the chronic stress of the past two years.  Students are less engaged.  Parents are feeling insecure.  Teachers and administrators are simply exhausted.  This has led to some interesting outcomes.  People are more demanding and less patient.  Burned-out teachers are choosing other professions.  

And, if you follow enough teachers on social media, you will find a lack of trust between teachers and their administrators.  This may be the saddest impact of all.  These are the people who should have each other's backs, but it seems that right now, people are too exhausted for empathy.  As a result, many administrators don't give teachers the benefit of the doubt, and many teachers assume the worst motivations from their leaders.

GRACE isn't immune, but because we already had a close relationship with our leaders and were in awe of them through the remote and hybrid times, we have been able to hold on to our loving relationships better than most.  As the year began, I prayed that this would be a year we would not have an opportunity to be in awe of their leadership.  This week showed that this prayer won't be answered for at least another year.  A teacher who has only been with us for a few months informed us the night before we returned from spring break that he would not be returning.  

With only nine weeks of school remaining, what is a school to do with this situation?  Try to hire a new teacher?  With the amount of time that would take, students would be left teacherless for most of the remaining days of the year.  As I said earlier, parents are feeling insecure about education as we emerge from the pandemic, and math is where that insecurity is most concentrated.  I don't know what would have happened in other schools, but here's what happened at GRACE.  Our principal stepped up and stepped in.  She was a math and science teacher prior to entering administration, so our kids will learn math well for the next nine weeks.  And, we know they will be loved for the next nine weeks.

But, it's not like she was loaded with free time before this happened.  GRACE administrators have jobs that are more than full-time already.  So, what happens with her principal responsibilities?  Other administrators have stepped in.  Our deans are doing more end-of-year planning, and our head of school is taking on more observations.  Our librarian, who was planning the DC field trip with our principal is now bringing it home alone.  The dominos just keep falling.

I don't know if shouting things from the rooftops was ever a real thing, but tribute must be paid to these awesome leaders, and this blog is the most public platform I have.  Thank you, Mandy, for stepping up at a moment's notice for our students.  Thank you, Meagan (our math department chair) for dealing with the inherent awkwardness this situation makes.  Thank you to Eric, Blake, Daniel, Cathy, and Willa Bea for taking as much off Mandy's plate as possible in the coming weeks.  Thank you to Marcia for making sure our 8th grade still gets a great trip to DC.  

And, thank you to everyone who prays for us.  Please add Mandy and the rest of these awesome administrators to your list if they aren't on it already.  And, if they are, give them a few more minutes.

  

Support For Administrators

Teachers are tired right now.  And, we haven't been shy about saying so.  Twitter is filled with tired teachers talking about how tired they are.  There are articles and polls about how many plan to leave the profession at the end of the year.  I can relate to the exhaustion and have concerns about the imminent teacher shortages that are most certainly to follow.

What I cannot relate to is the discussion about unsupportive administrators with unrealistic expectations.  I know they are out there, but I am beyond blessed to work in a school with administrators who listen to us, love us, and protect us.  During the first two weeks after Christmas break, every school in America was dealing with too few substitutes to cover the classes whose teachers were out.  This was happening in my school as well.  Our executive leadership team covered as many classes as possible to minimize teachers subbing for each other.  While they can't take away the stress of this difficult time, they have done everything they can to hold us up through it.

A little less than a year ago, we had a department chair meeting, in which I cracked from the stress of the year.  I mean I fell apart.  I cried through the entire meeting.  Every time I tried to articulate a thought, I couldn't get it out because I was envisioning a future of hybrid learning and couldn't take the thought of it.  After the meeting, I said to a friend of mine, "I've never left a meeting less sure of how it went."  While I knew they had listened to us, I couldn't gauge what the outcome of it would be.  Several weeks later, at a different meeting, it was clear they had responded to our feedback.  I was grateful and relieved and felt like there was a light at the end of the tunnel.  

In America, there's nothing easier than complaining about the decision made by those above you.  It is easy to think they sit in their office all day and don't remember what it is like to be in your position.  It is easy to think you would make different decisions if you had their jobs.  I remind myself frequently that I would not want to be the one making those decisions.  No matter what they do, they will hear from those who disagree.  They not only have to make tough decisions; they have to defend them.  I don't like having to do that, and I can't imagine a job in which that is such a large part of what I do.  

I have rules for a lot of things in my life, and one set of criteria governs what I will speak up about in a meeting.  

1. Do I care deeply enough about this issue to desire to add to the outcome of the discussion?  
2. Do I believe I can change the outcome of the conversation by speaking up?

The answer to number 1 is yes more often than not.  I've been teaching for a long time, and I care about a lot of things.  It is important to note, however, that I don't have to have to have a firm opinion on everything.  

The answer to number 2 is yes slightly less often but only slightly less.  If our administration presents a question for input in a meeting, it is because they truly want input and will listen.  There are a few issues in which I am aware that my opinion is different from the majority, so those are the few times where the answer to number 1 might be yes and 2 might be no.  I'm not going to keep arguing something just to be ornery.  Those are in meetings where a decision has not yet been made.  Once a decision is made, I would have to answer a really emphatic yes to both questions in order to go to the administration.  I think there might even be a third question.  Would I want to defend this decision to upset students, parents, or others who object to it?  That's an awfully high bar, so it isn't going to happen very often.  

Teachers are tired, yes.  Our entire profession has been put through the wringer for the past two calendar years.  And the whiplash from the adoration we received in March 2020 to the current state of affairs (where parents in some states are pushing to ban books or demand lesson plans for the year to be posted for review so they can make sure their kids aren't being taught anything they don't like) has been jolting.  But teachers, please do keep in mind that most of what your administrators do is not front-facing.  They are not just sitting in their offices.  They are tired too.  They may not be facing students every day the way we are, but they are doing a job we wouldn't want to do.  They were given just as little preparation for the pandemic as we were, and they have been fighting through it for just as long.  They may not be having to enforce mask mandates in the room in the same way we are, but they are getting the angry emails from parents over the decision to have them.  

We are all fighting through this the best way we can.  Your human administrators need your support as much as you need theirs.  

Thanksgiving - My Administration

 Every November, I use this blog to express my gratitude for those people in my past who have formed the educator I am today.  These have mostly been teachers I had in middle and high school.  I am continually thankful for formative people, but this year, I want to express my gratitude for the people who are currently in my educational life.  I will do this in three posts because I am thankful for my current administration, the parents of my students, and the colleagues with whom I share my daily life.  This post will be about the administration of GRACE Christian School.

I think the job of school principal is fairly misunderstood.  Most of us only remember the experience we had as children, when we were afraid to be sent to the principal's office; but that's about it.  The job of principal is much, much more than discipline, however.  They do so much that people don't consider.

School administrators create school culture.  They hire teachers that will fit with the school philosophy and with other teachers.  They send messages in a variety of ways, from emails to meetings.  They set the tone in every faculty meeting.  Whether they are strictly authoritarian, focused on compliance or they are very collaborative, focused on relationships; they communicate that with the way they make decisions.  My principal and head of school are great at setting a tone of confident leadership.  They ask for our input, and they truly listen.  Here are a few examples from the pandemic.  We began the year last year knowing it would be difficult to return to in-person learning pre-vaccine.  The public cannot know how social distancing affected EVERY part of the day.  It's not just a matter of positioning desks farther apart.  It especially influenced the less structured settings, like lunch.  This meant a lot more duties for teachers.  I went from having lunch duty a couple of months per year to having it every other month.  Initially, we had posted double the people on morning door duties because we wanted someone next to the temperature scanners.  About a month into school, we had a meeting to reassess.  While there was nothing that could be done about lunch, we were able to cut back on the morning duty because temperature scanning had become a normal matter which no longer required a person to be posted.  Our administrators immediately redesigned the duty list to reduce the pressure.  In February, we had a meeting to discuss remote learning.  Because administrators have all been teachers, they have always had their own experience to base their perspective on.  Hybrid was different.  For the first time, administrators had not done what their teachers were doing.  They came into the meeting with plans to include remote learning going forward, but when teachers expressed what this model was doing to us, they truly listened and changed course.  There were two immediate changes to address the biggest frustrations, but they also slowed their plans to have virtual instruction in the future.  They continued to solicit input, and we found a method that could serve students without overburdening teachers.  The pandemic isn't the only time when our administration has been supportive, but it has created more opportunities for us to recognize it; so here is one more.  Our head of school called a "snow day" last year when there was no prediction of snow because he recognized the need we had for rest.  Last week, we had another one when he extended the Veterans' Day observation Thursday to Friday as well.  The tone they set is one of love and support.  

School administrators make the decisions I don't want to make, and they have to take the heat for it.  In our return to school, administrators had more decisions to make than ever (and it's not like they had a small number of decisions to make before).  It seems there is nothing more controversial than masks, so when a message goes out about how we will handle that, their inbox is filled with replies from people who don't think we should be wearing them at all as well as those who wish we could figure out how to keep them on even while eating.  No matter what decision is made, there will be people who don't like it.  While they solicit input, they have to ultimately make a decision and confidently stick with it.  Few people tell you when they agree with you, but everyone tells you when they don't.  

Administrators carry the weight of the school.  From the day-to-day decisions to the big themes of the year, they are the guiding hand.  When things are going well, we all get to share in the celebration, but when something is wrong, they are the shoulders on which we lean.  When a school experiences a tragedy, they care for the students as well as the staff while experiencing their own emotions.  They are the ones with crying teachers in their office.  They are the ones making the decisions we are prone to criticize.  They are the public face of the school to parents.  They feel it all.  

I spend a lot of time on Twitter, reading what other teachers post.  Many are struggling with administrators who, not only don't understand, they don't care to understand.  They are dealing with leaders who have political ambitions or care only about test scores (even in a pandemic).  They have administrators who say, "We care about you" but don't show it.  I am grateful to have leaders who pray for and with us, find ways to give us a rest when they can, and lead with empathy and love.  Thank you to Eric Bradley (head of school), Mandy Gill (upper school principal), Blake Hickman and Daniel Servi (deans of students), leaders at the lower school campus, and the rest of our leadership team.