Adventures in Administration

This week we had our first "official"--as in calendared so you MUST participate--Professional Development opportunity.  Let me first clarify that the calendar was something I inherited and the system of scheduling PD is, as I am aware, starting to go the way of VHS tapes.  Be that as it may, the day was on the calendar so I had to do something.  Oh.  I have to plan an afternoon (only 2 hours were officially designated for PD as the morning was dedicated to National Testing Day) that is meaningful and valued by all departments?  Really?  O.K.  Time to implement some of those "Best Practices" that I have been hearing about and talking about with my Twitter PLN.  This blog is my chance to reflect on how the day was organized and start to plan for any changes that should be implemented before our next PD day (that one is in the Spring). Step 1: Information Gathering   My thoughts, very early on, were that 2 hours were in no way sufficient to br...

The school year begins in about 3 weeks for us.  I have spent the summer supposedly preparing myself for this new position: Associate Principal.  I dutifully vacated my old post of Social Sciences Chair and attempted to leave the department and its offices more organized and user friendly than when I arrived--the old adage of: "Leave the World a Better Place Than When You Found it" was my mantra as I sifted through literally decades of old text books and files.  I then began to make my new office my "home". Again I sifted through decades of books and files.  At times I wondered if I was making the right decisions.  After all, I've never done this job before so who am I to decide what stays and what goes? Slowly I gained confidence and books from the 1980s and 1990s on teaching methodologies were sent to the recycler, files were digitized, file cabinets removed.  I'm not finished yet (10 boxes and counting still to review) but I feel much better about my ...