Administrative Interview

So I just finished interviewing my principal. It was part of an assignment I had to do for my class. It was quite enlightening. Not that I necessarily learned anything new. But I feel like I understand better what it is like to be an administrator. A couple of insights I gained from this interview.

• I don't give our administrators enough credit. In the past, to be honest, I have been somewhat critical of some of our administrators. Passing judgment on some of the decisions they have made. Not that I didn't like them, or think they did a horrible job. But I have questioned some of their calls. I feel bad for doing this. I feel like I should apologize. Not that we should never question decisions made by our superiors. But I realized today that "They" are people too, they make mistakes, but they are trying their hardest to do what is right, and do what they can. It's not always up to them, sometimes their are laws, policies and regulations that keep them from making the "optimal decision". I need to be more understanding.
• The second thing I learned is that our administration really cares about the kids. That is the number one focus, and that's good to know.
• The best advice he could give me, or anyone going into administration, was to work on your ability to develop relationships with people. Other parts of administration are important, but to be able to develop a relationship with someone and to have their support or be able to have an open/honest conversation, even when you may not agree, is one of the most important things. People skills are key, and without them administrators have a hard time.

As part of another assignment, and what started as the purpose of this blog was to create my leadership philosophy. I won't bore you with all the details, but my leadership philosophy can basically be broken down into two main statements.

1. Doing what is best for students

• Above all, what will benefit students the most?

2. Your people are your greatest asset

• You need to gain the support of the people with whom you work, with the community, with students and parents, because if you have their support, then you can make great achievements, but without it, you can't do much.

To me, these are the two most important things to remember as an administrator, and principles that will guide me in my future decision making as a school administrator. I feel like through my interview today, that the importance of these principles was reaffirmed. It is good to know that others share my philosophy.

Student Survey

So I've been reading and hearing a lot lately about how our public school system is failing our students. Failing to prepare them for college, for their future careers, and to become productive citizens. It has been a little discouraging, not that I ever believed that we had a perfect education system, I know that there are many ways we could improve. But so much negativity about education, and I had never really felt that before, I thought for the most part we did a decent job at educating our students. So I came up with a plan, ask the students! I wondered what their perspective was on this. Now I know that the students at my school may not be the best representation of students nationally, but they are the only students I really have access to, so they'll have to do for my little informal study.
Every day when my kids come into class I have a question written on the board that they have to write about in their journals. At the end of the quarter I collect their journals and give them points for their responses. So one day as students entered, this was the question they saw on the board:
"If you were to give our school a grade (A-F) based on how well it met your academic needs and prepared you for the future, what grade would you give? Why? How would we compare to other schools?"

Today, as I graded their journals I payed special attention to their responses to this question. At first, I was discouraged, but the responses got more optimistic as I continued. Overall the average score students gave our school was between a B and B-. Most of the students who gave our school good scores made comments about good teachers, wide variety of courses to choose from, good school environment, and school pride. Common comments from students who scored our school low were things like, "Not challenging enough" or "doesn't prepare students for the future" or comments about bad teachers.

Overall I would tend to agree with them. That's probably about where I would rank our school. I think we have a great school and agree that some of the positives about our school are things like good school environment, course variety, good teachers and school pride. But we definitely have some things that we could do better, like make classes more challenging or prepare students better for their future, and improve teachers.