Today was such a nice day! I felt happy to be at school and teach. I use to feel that way all the time! That is until my P came to our school. I don't want to call this person a P because that would imply a roll of leadership! When the principal( who was out today hence my happy mood!), is there the entire staff looks depressed. The principal is not a leader but rather a dictator who only cares for 1 input! So many teachers have left the school! Why don't principals understand how the chain of happiness works? Happy teachers = happy students=happy parents= happy administrator... notice who is at the bottom!
I hear ya.
I too used (notice I said used) to work for someone like that. All he does is sit in his office and complains. He never did anything to change the issues that teachers were faced with everyday.
His attitude is "It's my way, no discussion". He could care less what teachers are saying would work better. If you approach him with a great idea, he shoots you down.
He allows others to run the day to day function of the school such as his secretary.
Within the past two years, teachers left him hanging in the middle of the year, without notice. Sometimes they would even get fed up with him and walk out of class to quit.
Even student enrollment is way down. Parents are finding other schools to send their children. He is one of those people who parents can not go to because his attitude towards them is "Im in charge here, this is the way it's going to be done, like it or not."
I don't know what to tell you. If possible I would look elsewhere for a teaching job, but with the economy the way it is, it may be one of those situations where you just have to bite your tounge and roll with the punches.
If Gaven's situation is similar to what Steffie describes (a lout that sits in the office all day) this can be a good thing. If one knows where the Prince is, one can do what one chooses. However, from the clues given by Gaven, it sounds like the Prince is out and about, throwing his/her weight around.
Many dictatorial decisions can be brushed off. Gaven, it might be of some use to specify an example or two of the kinds of things this person does. They can't watch you all the time. Many times visits are predictable. For example, I don't think I've ever had a Prince come walking through in the afternoon or on a Friday. A teacher must know that he/she is not powerless. I'll suggest again to read Sun Tzu's 36 strategems (http://tinyurl.com/5fnqju) as the ideas there can be transferred to our situations with a little thought.
Many teachers rely on the Prince for ultimate consequences for unruly and disruptive students. When one has an ineffective or appeasing Prince, one must become creative within the confines of the classroom to address certain student's behavioral needs. I don't believe I have ever worked for a Prince that effectively disciplined hard-case students (behavioral extinction was not achieved).
I am so sorry that any teacher is put through this. It was of some comfort to know my school isn't the only one losing teachers and students because of an amazingly inept P. We are 'learning through change' about how easy it must be to hold a position in which one takes no ownership nor responsibility. Stability is being fractured because the P says ok to a variety of things that go completely against the established rules. GRRRRR
I feel the same way. Our principal only cares about test scores. She keeps moving teachers to different grade levels. No one likes switching grade levels. The morale at our campus is very low. She is so negative. A career I used to love is now just a J..O..B..
I keep hoping she will retire.
Hang in there. We keep hoping someone is reading our district surveys.
If it gives you any comfort, things are just the same here in Australia. Our current P has never worked in a primary school before (go figure???). climbed her way via consultancy, has no clue about the daily operations of a school, let alone how to teach and couldn't run a bath let alone a school. To top it off she's a nasty piece of work who resorts to bullying tactics to undermine and threaten others. Over the last 12 months she's invited a couple of people to physically attack her - they obliged. Wish I knew who they were - I'd buy them a beer and shake their hand!
I am working in an extremely demoralized school. We had to sit and listen to the instructional coach and principal rant and rail against the teachers for an hour at the beginning of a day-long meeting.
The instructional coach is supposed to support the teachers at my school, and is instead a funnel to the principal. She was hired to replace a superior instructional coach that the principal didn't like. The principal lied to this previous instructional coach continuously, and was finally reprimanded by human resources for her outrageous behavior. Unfortunately, we still have this poor excuse for a coach, who for months told us "I don't know" and "You'll have to ask the principal" any time we had a question.
The principal treats the teachers as if they are bad boys and girls, and that she has to take the reins. If her hand-picked instructional coach had been doing her job, we as teachers could have done ours (which, according to the principal, is only to collect data, disaggregate it, and find trends - none of which helps us AT ALL in the classroom).
We haven't made AYP for enough years to warrant what they call "reconstituting 1", which means, I'm assuming, that next year, when we still haven't made AYP, the school district will look to rearranging the staff and structure of the school. I'm hoping, and so are most of the teaching staff - as well as some non-teaching staff - that the principal is the first to go.
When all the principal cares about is data, and not what actually occurs in the classroom (although she will spout the four words she believes belong in the Gospel - "Fidelity to the program" - even when the program doesn't work), what teachers need to have and do to be good teachers - and hence, help students learn, then the students will fail and the school will go down.
Here's hoping that they actually do restructure our school. The students and parents deserve more than a principal who only cares about data and herself.
It sounds like you think it's just fine that the principal just sits and doesn't do his job. The principal SHOULD be walking through classrooms - announced and unannounced. That's the only way he will know what's going on. That's the only way he can justify an evaluation of a teacher.
We shouldn't be grateful that he doesn't walk through. We should be appalled that he isn't doing his job.
When the principal doesn't care about what goes on in a school, that's when people are demoralized. I've worked in several schools where I was lucky if the principal even walked through once. I've been evaluated by principals who had no other choice but to give me good reviews since they'd never seen me teach. That's demoralizing.
It sounds like the only thing you think is important is student behavior. The principal is supposed to be the leader of the school. The principal is the captain of the ship. Hopefully this one will go down with the ship when it sinks, although most of the inept principals I know have deserted like rats at the first sign .
11-18-2009, 10:24 PM
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