I Never Wanted to Be a School Administrator. Here’s Why I Changed My Mind.
“Congratulations on your promotion, on becoming the dean! You’re in charge now!” a mum or dad yells from his automobile within the midst of dismissal. My abdomen is in knots because the phrases “in charge” echo throughout the car parking zone. I pause, pondering one of the best ways to reply. I drive a smile in gratitude. “I am still a teacher, and grateful to be part of a strong team,” I rapidly say, earlier than getting in my automobile. Every time a mum or dad or colleague congratulates me, I really feel these knots.
After grieving a full turnover in management final spring—waving goodbye to our head of college, our highschool director, our center faculty director and our faculty psychologist—our outgoing head of college determined that as an alternative of hiring externally to fill the normal management positions, we must always attempt a new strategy. He recommended that we experiment with creating a few new hybrid teacher-leader roles to see how that felt, and on the finish of the 12 months the brand new management staff might assess how nicely it labored and resolve whether or not to maintain the brand new construction or make a change.
I’ve labored in a variety of faculties, so I know that turnover is usually a warning sign. But I lastly discovered a faculty to name dwelling and I’m invested in making it one of the best faculty it may be. So I submitted an software for one of many hybrid roles. I interviewed, and was supplied the chance to proceed educating English and add educational dean to my place. When I was supplied the job, I was hesitant, however I accepted the supply. Like a true educator, I answered the decision regardless of my nerves.
Why I Didn’t Want to Be a School Leader
When I was a scholar, I by no means noticed my directors smile. In elementary faculty, my principal was notorious for knocking on classroom doorways and calling youngsters into her workplace. They’d at all times return with purple eyes and puffy cheeks. In center faculty, our directors have been officers patrolling the halls, writing detention slips to any scholar who was within the hallway after the final bell rang. My highschool principal was new to our faculty district, a white man main a Black faculty and a Black workers, and he at all times appeared to be in a fixed state of stress. I was certain of 1 factor: There was nothing joyous about being in class management. And it appeared like my very own academics agreed. I leaned in, eavesdropping to hear the best way my academics confirmed disdain for his or her superiors.
When I grew to become a instructor, these emotions remained. While my profession has been turbulent—I’ve labored in six faculties in seven years—one reality has remained fixed: the very last thing I ever wished to be known as was “an administrator.” Not a principal, not a director, not a dean. Similar to my experiences as a scholar, it was typically my directors who made me really feel small and powerless.
So a lot of my expertise as a instructor has been formed by my relationships with faculty leaders. I’ve typically felt that I work on the will of my directors. In the primary few years of my educating profession, I struggled to discover my footing as a result of I couldn’t discover the stability between being the instructor I wished to be and pleasing my directors—those who managed whether or not I stored my job or was fired. The ones who have been supposed to help me all year long. “You can’t disagree with me as a first-year teacher,” one administrator informed me. “You need a few more years of experience before you can have autonomy in the classroom. Follow what the district mandated,” stated one other.
In my early years of teaching, I remember saying to a colleague, “I didn’t quit my school, my community or my students. I quit my principal.” The only way I could hold on tight to my dream of being a teacher was to quit my principals. Year after year. I wasn’t the only one.
There was always a line drawn in the sand: school administrators on one side and classroom teachers on the other. When I was offered the dean of students position, it took me several days to accept because I was terrified of becoming part of the problem. I did not want to create the same feeling for my colleagues that I had experienced myself. I needed to make an intentional decision. I decided to take on the new role, but I committed to doing it differently. As a new administrator, I’m determined to avoid perpetuating a hierarchy between teachers and administrators.
Many school leadership models reflect a typical corporate ladder. Administrators usually have offices, higher wages and the most decision-making power in the building. To achieve this sense of “success,” there is one unilateral path for teachers: climb the ladder, work up towards school administration and leave teaching behind. But teachers should not have to become administrators to have decision-making power in schools.
As I considered taking on the new role, I thought a lot about the ladder and how I believed there should be another way. I reflected on my experience with school leaders and found myself thinking about the best administrator I ever had. It was Principal Williams, a Black man leading a small school for boys in the Southeast D.C., where I taught during my third year of teaching.
What made him so unique? Maybe it was his humility. He didn’t claim to have all the answers. Maybe it was the trust he put in me as a new teacher on his team. When I asked him which curriculum we used, he said, “I trust you to collaborate with the team and build it. I have some resources here to help us ensure that we create a scope-and-sequence for the literacy skills our students need. But we have to create it.” Maybe it was how frequently he said “we.”
Principal Williams had to answer to the school board, to our school’s executive director and to parents, but when it came down to decision-making, everything was up for discussion. I could walk into his office for anything. I felt motivated to become more involved in the school community because he made room for me.
He was flattening the hierarchy.
Principal Williams was a walking example of a progressive principal—one who amplifies the power of teacher leadership. But this isn’t standard. The role of a principal is complicated, muddled with contradictory expectations from various stakeholders and it has a fascinating history, shaped by the shifting responsibilities of the principalship, the evolution of power and authority held by the position, and by those who occupied it. Research shows the role became increasingly dominated by white men in the second half of the 20th century (although women principals made up the majority by 2018, according to the National Center for Education Statistics). A whole other story deserves to be told about this.
At one point in history, teachers were seen as the primary leader in a school building. Over time, teacher-leaders emerged, taking ownership over school operations, attendance and authority over teachers. But as time ushered a larger population of students and schools grew to support them, society became obsessed with managerial leadership and accountability. The principal emerged as the “middle man” between the interests of the broader school district and the day-to-day needs of teachers and student learning, which became competing priorities. Principals’ responsibilities became distant from classroom instruction.
As the role evolved and teacher observation became a priority for administrators, a natural rift emerged in many schools—a rift between principals and teachers. As principals gained more responsibility and the pressure intensified, teachers were given less decision-making power, even though they felt that pressure too. But we can revert back to an earlier model—one that amplifies teacher leadership and teacher voice.
What It Feels Like to Work in a School That Is Flattening the Hierarchy
The biggest challenge transitioning from a teacher to a teacher leader was the pressure I put on myself. It wasn’t just a new title. It was a new role, a new schedule, new relationships. When I accepted the hybrid role, taking on the middle school dean position and maintaining my position as an English teacher, which I love, I knew it would be a big change.
To make this manageable, my schedule was set up with fewer classes than it was last year, creating space for my new administrative duties. Last year I taught two grades of English, now I only teach one. Last year, I taught two humanities electives, now I only teach one. My teaching responsibilities have significantly shifted.
When I’m not teaching or planning, I’m meeting with students, either formally or informally. On some days, I help students navigate friendships and other days we talk about life in our shared spaces. I listen to their concerns. There’s not a day that passes when I’m not also conversing with parents, analyzing trends in behavior and student experiences, creating systems and practices to address them and working with my colleagues to offer support to students.
When I teach, I’m comfortable allowing my instruction and the relationships with my students in my classroom measure my success. I’m comfortable being on the ground, shoulder to shoulder with my colleagues, in the thick of it. But, as an administrator my work reaches far beyond my own classroom and students, so my success is measured in other ways. That has increased the weight on my shoulders and the pressure I put on myself.
I’m always thinking about maintaining my relationships with fellow teachers and staff. Will they trust me less because I wear the title of administrator? My inner voice, fueled by imposter syndrome, tells me to show my colleagues that I am working hard, that I’m still on the ground, even in this new role. This often leaves me trying to take on too much.
My friends remind me that this is not a role I can or should do by myself. “You have help,” they say. One of the biggest perks of this hybrid role is that I get the opportunity to talk with more of my colleagues than I did when I was a full-time teacher. That’s important because I’m most successful when I am in conversation with my co-workers, sharing my big visions, seeking feedback and asking for help. And they are always down to dream, to talk, to support. So far, my relationships with my colleagues have strengthened in my new teacher leadership role.
Walking into this role, I was also concerned about being able to build and sustain relationships with my students. Will they still see me as someone who supports them if I am now a dean who facilitates discipline procedures. My new role has me wearing many hats and I’m often flying through the building, whisking past students in the hallway. How could I maintain relationships with students with less face time with them in the classroom? Much of the magic that happens in our building, like many schools, takes place in classrooms.
I have to remind myself regularly that I am still a classroom teacher. But now, I have the benefit of seeing a fuller picture of my students as learners and humans through my conversations and interactions with their other teachers, parents, therapists—and with the increased time I spend in common spaces where students spend their unstructured time. And magic happens here, too. Unfiltered magic.
Being a teacher-leader has made me feel even more invested in my students’ full academic and human journey, and they can sense it.
Not All Schools Can Design Teacher-Leader Roles. But All Schools Can Amplify Teacher and Student Voice.
I understand that not all schools have the opportunity to create more paid roles for teacher leadership in the building. But flattening the hierarchy is not just about new positions. It’s about shifting decision-making power and building trust between administrators and teachers.
One vital step is to acknowledge that college tradition isn’t nearly academics cultivating sturdy relationships with college students, it’s additionally about colleagues creating and sustaining deep, respectful relationships with one another. Schools have to create alternatives for workers to have unstructured time to get to know each other, to vent, to share tales and swap concepts.
Another daring transfer faculties could make is to rethink decision-making. Shifting focus from the choice itself to enhancing the decision-making course of can go a great distance. Because the stakes will be excessive, there’s a lot of strain to make selections in faculties, and rapidly. But if we wish to flatten the hierarchy in faculties, we have now to be extra intentional about together with numerous views within the course of and actively pushing again in opposition to making selections with out listening to from a number of voices. That takes time. Something that has helped our staff is to come to conversations with out a answer already in thoughts in order that we are able to talk about points overtly, actually and in order that we are able to create extra room for democratic decision-making. And in conditions which have much less house or time for dialogue, we’re clear about that.
Finally, as an administrator and instructor, I don’t make selections with out operating it previous college students. We cannot pass over college students on this dialogue about decentralizing energy in faculties. Students ought to have the authority to authorize checks and balances. Every determination made by adults within the constructing impacts them, so it needs to be an expectation that their views are a part of the decision-making course of. If adults are making the entire selections and college students are on the receiving finish, then educators are nonetheless gatekeeping energy.
Schools are uniquely-positioned neighborhood areas the place college students and adults, collectively, can dream massive concerning the world we wish to stay in and actively collaborate to deliver that imaginative and prescient to life. When faculties reduce out the center managers they will give attention to what actually issues most, a thriving neighborhood the place everybody’s voice is heard. Schools have a higher likelihood at succeeding when there are much less full-time directors and extra teacher-leaders, much less top-down selections and extra inclusive conversations.
Cultivating a tradition the place each voice issues is just not the quickest answer, neither is it the best, however my hope is that it’ll have a long-lasting influence at our faculty. The extra that we flatten the hierarchy, focus our consideration on constructing belief and discuss extra with each other, the higher likelihood we have now of making faculties that academics need to keep at and that college students need to be taught in.
