The Administration Roof

A manager's job is to create and maintain, as much as possible, the conditions under which their employees can do the very best work. 

That holds true for school administrators as well. 

The main function of school administrators is to create the conditions in which teachers can do their very best work. If education is work that goes on out skies that are, some days, spewing forth rain and sleet and snow. it is the administrator's job to be the roof that keeps the weather off the teacher's head so that the teacher can, in turn, do their job for the benefit of the students.

The Discipline Roof

Every teacher has the job of running an orderly and safe classroom where every student who wants to learn is able to. But to do so requires administrative backup. 

Last week, the New York Times asked who will enforce the new AI rules and concluded "probably teachers." Except teachers know exactly how this will go-- just like every other tech policy n(e.g. putting limits on phones). Some student will challenge the teacher and refuse to comply, or some parent will call in to protest the implementation of the policy. At that point, one of two things will happen-- the building administration will back up the classroom teacher, or the building administration will fold. If they fold, teachers will have slim-t-none chance of ever enforcing that policy ever again.

Likewise, when a student is sent to the office, every student in that classroom learns a lesson. The lesson is either 1) the rules are firm and you break them at your peril or 2) there are no consequences to crossing the line. They learn what the real rules of the school are as opposed to what the rulebook says.

Many teachers point to ideas like treating misbehavior as communication or systems that emphasize restoring and supporting problem students, but none of these more empathetic approaches are incompatible with consequences for misbehavior, nor are they incompatible with protecting the educational rights of the rest of the students in the classroom. You need both. A school with no consequences is impossible to teach in, but a school focused on a culture of compliance breeds resentment and rebellion. As with so much in education, balance is needed. But it takes building administration to pull it off.

The Parental Roof

There is a special kind of demoralization that comes with working in a building where any decision you make in the classroom will be automatically overruled if a parent calls the office. I have worked for principals whose main policy was aimed at avoiding any parent phone calls ever. When you work in a setting in which parents always take precedence over classroom teachers, you start self-editing. The chilling is palpable and real, as is the sense of powerlessness (raise your teacher hand if you've ever told a parent, "I agree this is a problem, but you should make the phone call because they will listen to you far more than they will listen to me.")

This has only gotten worse as the MAGAfied "parental rights" movement has convinced parents that they should loudly demand that every detail of curriculum should be subject to their approval and revision. 

Parents should absolutely be involved in their children's education, and their legitimate concerns should never be ignored or minimized by the school. A good administrator knows when parental concern approaches harassment of the classroom teacher, and a good administrator backs his people (that includes taking the teacher's word that the perfect child who "would never do something like that" did, in fact, do something exactly like that). 

The Staffing Roof

There's a prevailing myth that teachers rush to protect bad teachers. Wrong. Nobody wants bad teachers in a school less than the other teachers who have to work with them.

W. Edwards Deming, the management genius, had an invaluable observation about dead wood in an organization. If someone in your organization is dead wood, he pointed out, that means they were either dead wood when you hired them, or you hired them and then "killed" them. Either way, dead wood is a management problem.

As an administrator, you support your teachers by hiring capable teachers to work with them. That means hiring processes that don't depend on mere luck. That means providing the time and resources and time (yes, I did that on purpose) for meaningful mentoring; many teachers start out as neither awesome or awful, and it's the support they get at the beginning of their career that will make the difference. 

If a teacher is failing to perform well, it's an admin's job to deal with that. Help them get better, and if you can't, make the case for removing them. People like to bitch about union's "protecting" bad teachers, but all they are doing is requiring the district to follow due process-- and that is administration's job. As I've said since my days as a union local president, "Behind every bad teacher who keeps her job is an administrator who isn't doing theirs."

The Time Roof

Without knowing a thing about your school, I will absolutely guarantee this-- no teacher in your building has enough time. 

So. Do. Not. Waste. It.

No meetings that could have been emails. No meetings with the full staff that should have been a meeting with one or two specific staff members. 

Time is the most precious resource your teachers have, and as an administrator you should preserve it as if it were diamonds and gold. That includes protecting their time from lengthy meetings or requests just to "talk to their class for a few minutes" and from disruptive announcements during class time. I'm not saying there's never ever a good reason to take some of their time, but make sure it's a damned good reason. 

The Administrative Roof

Sometimes, some of your fellow administrators are the problem. Maybe it is a special department head on your same level who is trying to commandeer some of your people for her special project (and boy howdy-- one of the under-discussed factors that makes special ed an unappealing field is having to work for two not-always-in-synch bosses). Maybe one of your colleagues has been unleashing directives as part of a resume-building exercise (that will fall apart shortly after they move on to their next job). Maybe your district has a superintendent is an untrustworthy SOB whose technique for downsizing staff is to try to make certain targeted teachers as miserable as possible. Maybe one of your administrative colleagues is just really bad at their job. 

Those folks have power over teachers that those teachers are poorly equipped to combat (particularly if your union is also largely powerless). Whether you want to or not, you are going to have to choose a side in a fight you didn't start or look for. Yes, the choices you make are going to affect your career (probably why you are polishing your resume). It sucks, and teachers may sympathize with your plight, but they still want to know whether they can trust you or not. 

Some buildings are also hit by Central Office Syndrome, a condition in which the people who work in the main office start thinking that the work that goes on in that office is the main work of the district. This doesn't result in just an annoying attitude that communicates to teachers that when they ask for support they are interrupting Important Work; it also results in policies where classroom teachers are asked to take on extra duties in order to make life easier, more streamlined, for the front office. 

The Policy Roof

When No Child Left Behind, Common Core, Race to the Top, and the Big Standardized Test shambled onto the scene, administrators placed themselves somewhere on the Collaborators spectrum. On one end were admins who said, "We are going to redirect all of our resources to meet these policy demands. New aligned teaching materials. Weekly data meetings. The key question for all decision-making will be 'will it improve test scores?'" On the other end were admins who said, "Do the best teaching you know how to do and don't worry about any of this other stuff." 

How much Common Core messed up your school depended almost entirely on your local admins. They might have stayed devoted to providing a full education for every student, or they might have used practice tests to identify on-the-line students who then lost recess and arts and science and history so they could sit in extra math and reading classes all day. Those kinds of choices were entirely local, and they told every teacher a great deal about what their administration truly valued-- compliance and appearances, or actual education. 

We don't talk enough about the role of bad administrators in school problems large and small. Schools weather a variety of storms, both broad national ones and noisy local ones. In any case, it's the job of administrators to maintain the roof that keeps the classroom teachers warm and dry enough to do the best job they can do. It's not a fun job, to be up there working in the rain (that's why admins get the big bucks). But without that roof, teachers are at the mercy of the storm.