Okay I am going to rant here just a little bit. As you know I am a school principal. There are parts of the job that are great but there are parts of the job that are not so great. Depending on who you are as a leader the list of what is great and not so great varies.
There comes a time where we all make mistakes. It comes with the territory. No matter what job you do you are going to make mistakes. LORD KNOWS I have made my fair share. As a teacher I was even written up once. You know what? I probably deserved it. I did not and still don't totally agree with it but I UNDERSTAND why it had to happen. POINT BEING...WE ALL MAKE MISTAKES.
There is an administrator that I know that will remain nameless that HATES confrontation with parents. It is known by the teachers and definitely by the parents that if you are called into a parent meeting by the principal that you are going to lose face in this meeting 90% of the time. If I am a parent at this school and I have a problem it is also known by parents and teachers that all I have to do is call the principal and she will take care of it. This of course leaves the teacher completely out of the loop and unaware that there is even a problem. When teachers tell the principal that they were not aware of the problem because the parents had not talked to the teacher the Principal's answer to that is "That's how are parents are here at......elementary"
THEY ARE THAT WAY BECAUSE YOU LET THEM DO IT MORON!!!!!!
If a teacher makes a mistake at this elementary the principal pretty much leaves the teacher out to dry in front of the parents. Tell me what this does for moral. If you get called into one of these meetings you have NO IDEA what you did but you are pretty sure you are going to get creamed. OH PLEASE LET ME WORK FOR YOU O' LEADER.
I am sorry about that.
I remember when I first took over at my campus. I literally had a line every day of parents trying to kiss my butt so they could "Get In" with the principal. I of course shot this down quickly. It also told me a lot about the previous principal.
I don't know why this is so hard and I bet if I asked YOU how would you handle this situation you would do the same thing. HERE IS HOW I WOULD HANDLE IT.
Parent calls with complaint.
ME: I hear what you are saying Mr. or Mrs...... Tell me what did the teacher do to handle this situation when you talked to them about it?
Parent: Have not talked to teacher
ME: Well I tell you what. Here is the teachers number and their conference times. Go ahead and set up a time for that meeting and I will get in contact with the teacher and tell them that we have talked and they can be expecting your phone call. (I do that because I want the parents to know I am going to talk to the teacher about what we talked about so they don't change their story)
I then talk to the teacher and give them a warning about what is coming up and they can talk to me and give me their side of events. I also coach them on how to handle the situation and help them with wording when they talk to parents. You don't want to give the parents ammo for their weapon.
IF THE TEACHER SCREWED UP- YOU ALWAYS SUPPORT THE TEACHER IN FRONT OF THE PARENT.
Me: Mr or Mrs... WE could have handled this situation better. We have steps already in place so that this does not happen again. I apologize for the inconvenience.
When parent is gone: I talk to the teacher. Okay, a situation occured that we could have handled better. We all make mistakes but the important thing is that we learn from them and we become better at what we do because of them. If that is the case then in fact this was a GOOD mistake. We know what to do in the future and we will be better because of it. Okay? So go get'em chief!
THAT'S IT!!!!! Why is this so darn hard? Many times it never gets to this point because once the parent gets the facts from the teacher they realize their child LIED to cover their butt or so they thought. Really all they did was delay the beating.
Some administrators I guess just want to do anything to please the parent's. I am guessing they feel that if the parents are happy then they won't complain to central office and they won't have any problems.
What they don't realize is how little respect they have in their own building from the people who are in the trenches doing the dirty work every day. It really makes me want to THROW UP. When I see this administrator I just have so little respect for them because of what they put their teachers through.
Who is in charge of this building YOU the principal or the parents. Sadly, this school is run by the parents.
Do you think that MIGHT be the reason so many people are leaving Principal MORON?
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