Becoming an Administrator

We ask our students, especially in middle school, to work on transitions, changes, to Never Give Up!  Reach For The Stars!  Change Is Good!  And now, here I am, hovering above myself, trying to remeber the advice I gave my students.  I am two weeks into a new path, a shift in my professional life, and it is exciting, scary, challenging, and invigorating!  I have shifted my middle school educator role from classroom teacher to assistant principal.  With no students in the building, it has become a great time to reflect about my hopes, fears, challenges, and excitements.

More than anything, I am excited to impact the lives of middle school students on a broader scale.  Looking back to my purpose for wanting to become an administrator, it was that - I want to help impact the lives of more students than just those in my classroom.  It is with this idealistic view that I enter into July and August, albeit with no students or staff in the building!  I am excited about helping to develop protocols to support struggling learners, and ways to extend the learning for those students that are ready to move to the next level.  I am excited about cultivating student life, developing the adult-student bonds in the school, and viewing excellent learning and teaching.  I am excited to get into classrooms and see great instruction happening, and help improve student learning.

My fears - so silly, as I fear like a middle schooler myself with these fears, but perhaps that means they are human, and not age-based - are that I won't know names and faces of staff, and that I won't know the answer to something that I should have!  (Uh, sorry, I went to the bathroom during that part of my degree program...I'll have to look that up.)  I worry about some the technical learning curve that exists, such as in scheduling, but know that like my students, I need to remember to stick with it, and not get frustrated.

This is all so new, that sometimes I have an idea (Eureka!  Oh, well if only I was an administrator, I could...), and then a moment later, I realize - wait a minute, that is something that could happen because of me!  This is great! 

Now I know it's not all peaches and cream all the time, but the excitement of trying new things and helping to improve student learning and student life for more kids is invigorating to me.  I need to remember to come back to doing what's right for students, and need to spend some time observing - months, probably, listening, watching, asking questions, and seeing how my new school works.  It will be a steep learning curve, but one I'm excited for and ready for.  I need to preserve these feelings - and remember that this is what many of my students will be feeling - perhaps every day!