Learning at the Heart

100 Posts in 100 Days

Back in Post 79:  Warm Welcomes, I started to tell the story of walking into a school building as the new principal two weeks before school was starting only to find it essentially deserted.  As I wrote that post, it occurred to me that this is a story full of leadership and learning.  There are so many parts to this story, so it will unfold over the next several posts.  Next up:  Stunned.  This post is about my next moves when I found the deserted office.

Stunned

After an unexpected job opening that felt tailor-made for me, a series of dilemmas and the decision to apply, a successful interview experience, and some hard goodbyes, I walked into my new school building full of anticipation and excitement.  I had been hired late and I knew there was work to be done to be ready to open the doors to students in families in just a couple of weeks.  

I arrived expecting to find the main office open to the public and an administrative assistant who would help me get settled.  And, let’s face it, I thought she would be one to train me on the culture and processes of the school!  What I walked in to, though, was a dark building.  

Not a soul to be found.  

Unopened delivery boxes and mail were in haphazard piles all throughout the office.  There was a computer on my desk that I could turn on, but I had no login information.  All I could achieve was a blank screen.  I found a box with stacks of class placement cards.  There was a card for each student in the school and they were bundled in groups, held by rubber bands and labeled with sticky notes.  The sticky notes indicated the teacher of each class.  Five of the bundles had “unfilled” as the teacher name.  There was a master schedule, also with a note.  That schedule showed two lunches per day in the multi-purpose room but the note indicated that the multi-purpose room wasn’t large enough.  The schedule would need to be re-done so that there were 3 lunches per day.  Which meant nearly everything else in the schedule would need to adjust.

I remember just standing in my office, motionless and staring.  I felt stunned.  I was trying to make sense of it all.  And think about what I could do.  The custodian came in and it was from him that I learned our school’s administrative assistant was out on a medical leave and not scheduled to return until November.

“How could no one have told me?” I thought.  She had been part of the team present at that first interview.  

When I got over the shock, I asked myself 2 questions:  

Who do I know?

and 

What can I do?

Who Do I Know?

Well, I knew some of the district’s HR team who had been my point of contact during the interview process.  I knew a handful of people in the Curriculum and Instruction office.  And I knew my Executive Director, which was a stroke of luck.  (Remember in yesterday’s post when I wrote that I was interviewed on the the last day of work for the previous ED?)  He was also brand new in the district and in his role, but we had worked together for several years in the district I was coming from.  I knew that these colleagues were going to be the ones to help get me started.

What Can I Do?

My choice was simple and straightforward.  I did the only thing I could think of.  I got into my car and I drove to the central office.  Once there, I made a series of unannounced visits:

• To my Executive Director’s office.  He wasn’t there, but I talked with his assistant and let her know what was going on.  I told her I was planning to visit HR.  She walked me over and got me started.  And she made sure he contacted me within a short period of time.

 

• Human Resources:  In HR, I was able to get critical access and information:
  • Get my district login so that I could access systems.
  • Get a list of my staff and their contact information.
  • Confirm that my open/ “unfilled” teaching positions were advertised and learn the process for interviewing and hiring. 
  • Get the training required by agreement with the Teacher’s Association to be a hiring administrator and actually execute the hiring process.
  • Talk to the substitute office.  This might have been the single most important move I made on that day.  The people in this office were able to identify recently retired administrative assistants who were willing to substitute in schools.  They started calling and within a day, I had a very experienced assistant who knew all of the district’s systems and was willing to start working with me right away.  (And, who ended up coming out of retirement to stay with us long term! 🙂)  

 

• Finance Office:  In the Finance Office, I was able to see what my budget was and if I could afford to ask key people in the school to come back early.  In addition to the retired administrative assistant, I was able to bring back some other office staff and begin working with some teacher leaders (see next item).

 

• Curriculum and Instruction Office:  I knew that the district had a teacher leader program where each school had representatives who served as liaisons and site-based staff developers for curriculum and assessment.  I was able to find out more about who those teachers were in my building, what their August training schedule was, and what they would likely be training my faculty on that year.  Putting that information together with my staff contact list and budget information, I was able to start making phone calls and assembling a planning team.

 

As I reflect upon and write about this experience, the thought that comes to mind is, “Thank goodness I wasn’t a first year principal.”  In the moment, the decision to leave the school and drive to the central office felt desperate.  And, it was.  But I don’t know if first-year-principal me would have known who to talk to, what to ask for, and what to advocate for.    

Listing the various departments and the ways they helped me looks very organized and thoughtful.  That’s not how the conversations went.  I guarantee that my demeanor in each of those conversations leaned far closer to desperate than to calm.  The colleagues I worked with that day, the ones who literally rescued me, were my allies and support for the entire time I worked in that district.  My plight became their shared plight.  The sense of urgency and importance, coupled with successfully opening school a couple of weeks later, instantly bonded us.  I didn’t know then how invaluable those relationships would prove to be over the years.

I was building a planning team and garnering the resources to get the school year started. 
Tomorrow’s post will share how I worked with the faculty and staff in our first days together.