Sitting in administrator meetings is pretty informative stuff.
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We all have someone in our lives that goes a little too far with the personal questions. It's not really their business, but they're your boss, it gets a little tricky.
The exact opposite of my soon to come negative moment number 6 and the principal I had at the beginning of last year, one day a few months ago, I got observed 4 times in one day, It wasn’t punitive, it was because word spread that I was doing something cool and wanted to see. My principal came in, sat down, and immediately got involved in the lesson. The kids loved having him there, he enjoyed being there, and he even inserted his own history knowledge to give that class her observed something special and unique to go along with his visit. I appreciated it.
Very different from the principal I used to have that would make things worse by making things up and being rude to the kids. Follow us on Facebook; Twitter; iTunes; Soundcloud; Stitcher Related Articles: Quality feedback in Dallas Teacher Observations Evaluating Dallas Teachers Strong Observation and Feedback - Feeling appreciated Long Spot Observation - Dallas Teacher Evaluations Top Ten Positive and Negative Moments in Dallas Education 2015 Positive 06: Supportive Principal Positive 07: Department Chair Respect Negative 07: Principals Lying Positive 08: DISD Student Has Her Baby Negative 08: Parent thinks their child is stupid Positive 09: Thanked by a Parent Negative 09: Blamed for a DISD Student Fight Positive 10. Alex Hales and Retired Teacher Negative 10. Promising DISD Student Gets Pregnant This is a recently covered topic, but it was around the beginning of 2015 when I first realized the degree to which my principal was making things up. It was his first year, so I cut him a bit of slack with knowing exactly what was going on in the school. The thing is, it didn’t get better. Either he wasn’t learning or he wasn’t so concerned with the facts as he was with the numbers at the end of the year.
I started to get curious when he started to spin the climate survey data. Like he did this year, he told all of us that the climate survey was not the time to “air out dirty laundry” and that it impacted our pay. In addition to not being true, it made me feel bullied which I wasn’t a fan of. It hit me when we all heard that the then superintendent Mike Miles was coming for a visit. The day before, I had a student walk in and say he just got suspended. Frequently in trouble, the student asked me why he was being suspended for 3 days for not having a uniform on when he never has his uniform on. This is true, the kid is always out of uniform but they never said anything until the superintendent comes around. Throughout the day, more of these frequent troublemakers started to get suspended. Around 6th period I heard a commotion outside my classroom that was clearly a kid yelling at the principal. After much profanity from the student and quite a bit of yelling from this principal, the principal yells “get this trash out of my school” and proceeds to ridicule the student for being two grade levels behind. Why did this strike me as dishonest? From a person that preaches school turnaround and changing school culture, this is not what I expected. No students are going to respect you if the only time they see you is when you’re threatening to cancel lunch and have sandwiches brought to the classrooms every day if students don’t stop being tardy. It became clear to me that for him it was less about the kids and more about his public appearance. Hey, the district loves him so I guess everything is fine on paper, but there are some things you just don’t say to kids no matter how frustrated you get. Calling them “trash” is out of line. Follow us on Facebook; Twitter; iTunes; Soundcloud; Stitcher Related Articles: DISD Principals lie to DISD teachers DISD Principals Lie to DISD Teachers Mixed Messages from Dallas Administrators What makes a good DISD Principal? DISD Principal turnover HUB finalist announcement DISD Teachers cry from bad administrators Top Ten Positive and Negative Moments in Dallas Education 2015 Positive 07: Department Chair Respect Negative 07: Principals Lying Positive 08: DISD Student Has Her Baby Negative 08: Parent thinks their child is stupid Positive 09: Thanked by a Parent Negative 09: Blamed for a DISD Student Fight Positive 10. Alex Hales and Retired Teacher Negative 10. Promising DISD Student Gets Pregnant Congratulations to the Principal of the Year winners announced today.
Winners are as follows: Principal Tanya Shelton of Lagow ES Nakia Douglas of Barack Obama Male Leadership Academy Tracie Washington of Dade Middle School Julie Singleton of Holland ES The Hub put up the finalists yesterday. Certainly there were some shockers, both related to principals included and excluded from the running. We should now look at these principals and their schools to determine a few things: 1. What are they doing right that has earned them so much acclaim? 2. How/Why are their campuses succeeding? 3. What is the student response to these leaders? In short, what makes a good principal? If these are our best, what makes them so and how do we get all of our principals to that level? We have a Dallas Education blog store now! Buy something for an educator you care about! Related Articels DISD Principals lie to DISD teacheres What makes a good DISD Principal? DISD Principal turnover HUB finalist announcement DISD Teachers cry from bad administrators Last night I blogged about principals lying to teachers about the impact that climate surveys have their pay. They don't impact teacher pay, but they do impact principal pay. As outraged as principals laying to teachers makes me, I don't like to criticize without also seeking to understand. I've talked to a few principals/assistant principals about making things up to teachers and these are the results of the discussions.
1. They honestly don't know - Schools, especially those that are part of large districts, are difficult to run and everything is surrounded by miles of red tape. The expectation that every principal and assistant principal is an expert of the ins and outs of every policy and initiative is unfair. Sure, they miss quite a bit of school for training, but that doesn't mean that they've mastered the information. I had three principals in the past with very different approaches to this. One would always say they didn't know but would ask. I like this approach best. That's what I tell my kids. I had another that would give me an answer and acknowledge that it may not be correct, but that it would get me though the day until there could be clarification. Also acceptable. Short term problem solving and a promise of follow up. The last one would just make stuff up and wouldn't admit that he had no idea what was going on. This only caused chaos and discomfort. 2. They want to be liked - It's sad really. Some principals care more about the popularity contest than actually leading their campus. Others genuinely don't understand the difference. Anytime you hear "look, I don't like it either, but it's district policy," you should check and see if it actually is district policy. This is how teachers end up hating districts and superintendents. People at lower levels blame things on them that they never said because they think people are more likely to comply. It happened with Mike Miles more often because he was the perfect scapegoat / boogeyman, but toward his end the guy started more openly confronting Executive Directors and principals about using his unpopularity to justify making whatever changes in their campuses they were too shy to put theri own name on. Example: At my campus we were told that it was district policy we would get put on a growth plan if our passing percentage was below 10% and that it was district policy. In fact, the district goal was 15% and there was no mandatory growth plan attached to it. 3. "You can't handle the truth" - Some principals just don't trust faculty and staff to be able to digest the information. I'm not saying principals think their teachers are dumb, but I am saying that principals would rather command than explain and have a discussion of expectations. The other side of it is the belief that teachers do just enough to get by so if they don't lie and say 10% mandatory passing percentage, then the school will never go beyond the district expectations. 4. "We're not lying. You're not listening" - It is entirely possible that some teachers selectively listen. I give instructions in class all the time that bounce around in my students' heads and come out as something completely different. It happens. Sometimes it's not that it was a lie, it was misheard and then spread around town as a great lie of some tyrant trying to rule some school with deception and an iron fist. Having one of these negative experience is possibly why some principals just choose to say whatever they want under the assumption that nobody is listening anyway. Strong leadership is key to a successful school.If you don't have trust you have nothing. Honesty is part of it. Showing you are knowledgeable and dependable is another part of it. I'm trying to understand even though I will never support lying to teachers. Why? Again, because it's taking advantage of people that aren't paying attention. Most people don't know 100% of how TEI works, what district policy is on every part of a student's uniform is, or any number of small procedures in the handbook. That doesn't mean it's right or fair to use that to your benefit as a campus leader. Related Articles: DISD Principals Lie to DISD Teachers Mixed Messages from Dallas Administrators Frustration Over Poor Administrative Leadership Causes Tears There are very few things that make me sit down and blog after 5pm. Outside of something game changing like a school shutting down or a new superintendent being hired, I'm all blogged out for the day around then. Principals lying to teachers? That really gets me fired up.
If I hear one more teacher ask if climate surveys impact their pay under TEI, I'm going to call a poorly attended press conference on the matter. Where is this coming from? Principals walking around to PLC's saying that climate surveys "aren't for airing out [the campus'] dirty laundry" and that "[climate surveys] affect our pay." Is that true? The answer? NO! As a teacher, your TEI scores are not impacted by pay; however, your principal does feel the sting of a poor climate survey. I know, could this just be a rumor? If I hadn't heard this principal on multiple occasions, some blogged about here, make things up, I'd check a few more sources. I'm a blogger, not an investigative journalist. I'll leave that to the pros like Tawnell. What I did check on was my TEI knowledge. I reached out to a few people that know it way better than I to so that I could ease some of the fears floating around this evening. Climate surveys don't impact the pay of teachers. This doesn't just upset me because it's dishonest. Everyone lies. We'll talk about why principals lie in the morning. It upsets me because when principals do this, they are clearly bullying and taking advantage of people that aren't paying close enough attention to the details of these complex systems. It's cowardly and it's mean. Teachers can't dig into this stuff because they're busy helping kids. Show some compassion and some respect. Benefit of the doubt - I understand that some administrators are poorly informed too. Even if that's true and it isn't the intentional spread of misinformation, it's still using this "we're all in it together" sentiment to strong arm teachers into cooking the books for you. You're still in the position of power even when you're smiling with your arm around them. Not nice. Today may just be a day I need to devote to the different reasons why teachers cry. Rarely do you see it in public, but when you do, it's heart breaking. Last night I saw a DISD teacher cry. Hard.
These weren't the maybe they're sad or maybe there's something in their eye tears. These weren't the I just reached for a popcicle but someone just left the empty box in the freezer tears. They weren't even the I thought there was an extra step so I fell and scraped my knee in front of everyone tears. These were big, angry, frustrated, streaming down their face tears. What caused them? Reason number 1: Incompetent Administrators. We all know that assistant principal or that just looks lost. That's frustrating, sure. You ask them a question or need some assistance and they're all thumbs. They don't know anything and they don't know where to direct you. That's just bad customer service. It's annoying like a waiter that keeps spilling water next to your table. It becomes tear inducing when that administrator knows they're terrible so they overcompensate by throwing their weight around (sometimes literally) to pretend they know what they're talking about. Example: Yelling at kids to use the front door when everyone on campus knows the policy is for kids to enter at the back or side doors where the metal detectors are plugged in. That makes the kids hate admins. That's the student side though. Bad admins bring teachers to tears by writing them up for frivolous reasons like walking in 3 minutes before class is over on a test day and writing up a teacher for not "teaching bell to bell." Yes, that's a real write up that I signed with a scribble that was 100% not my signature our of protest. The worst thing poor admins do, completely in my opinion, is dump off all the things they don't know how to do onto their department chairs and instructional coaches. Both of those people are busy enough. Adding the insult of pretending like you're trusting them and giving them more responsibility is what triggers those angry frustration tears. |
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