Whether you are starting off as a new administrator, or you have been in the role for awhile, it is important that you “make your mark” and bring your own style to a position. Just like your teachers want to make an impact with their students, you want to make an impact with your school community. Doing something “awesome” is important as administrators should feel that they are contributing to the growth of the school, not simply the management of it.
In my own experience, it is easy to lock yourself in a room, work on some great ideas, and come out with something (you believe to be) new and amazing. Yet closing yourself off and focusing on being “innovative” often leaves you with great ideas that will get nowhere, because you have not created the relationships needed for people to feel safe trying something new. If you don’t spend time in the classroom and see what the inner-workings are of what learning looks like every day, your ideas can become great in theory, but unattainable in practice. It is important to recognize that innovation is a human endeavour, and if you are going to put too much time into something, it should always be people, not stuff.
So what is a great step to help move this forward? Move your office into a classroom.
Administrators have a lot of managerial duties that they have to get through in a day. It can honestly be overwhelming. That being said, it is rare that we don’t have access to an untethered device that we can go sit in a classroom and be a “fly on the wall”. This helps not only with visibility of students, but will give you a great perspective of what teaching and learning looks like, and what hurdles teachers have to jump through in a day to be successful. Is the technology working? Does the classroom have seating that is conducive to different types of learning styles? Does Wifi work?
Many teachers accept their classroom “as is” and do the best with what they have and they don’t say anything. This does not make those boundaries acceptable. By simply spending an hour catching up on emails from a classroom, you will learn a lot more about your school than you would spending an hour in your office. You don’t have to do this all of the time, but you should do it often.
This isn’t “no office day”. Although I love the intent behind that initiative, I find the idea of having a solitary day to go spend time in classrooms is not enough. This should be a weekly process, if not more. The time you spend just sitting in a classroom builds a comfort and trust level with staff who eventually don’t even know you are there. That’s kind of the point. If you don’t have time to go into a classroom, your priorities might be out of order.
Through this process, you might not get as much done, but you will build relationships with teachers in this process that will lead them going over-and-above for you, which in the long run, will not only save you time, but creating better opportunities for your entire school community.
Believe me, the investment is worth it.
