THE FOUR YEAR ITCH

Pamela had been in her position of middle school head for four years at the Chesner School. She had come to the position from a K-9 school where she had served as an admissions dean and 6th grade teacher. Pamela liked her current job as a division head, but always felt overwhelmed. Having never had any training in administration or leadership, she had spent most of her four years making it up as she went along. First, she had had to understand the culture of the school; that was one year. Her last three years had been spent putting out fires; at least that’s how it felt to her. Pamela loved the school and adored the students, but she felt she needed a stronger foundation in leadership and organizational management in order to keep her eye on the “big picture.” She already had a master’s degree in elementary education, but she was finding that that didn’t help her when two teachers were having a disagreement or when a parent called to complain about his child’s lost lunch box on the school bus. In her last evaluation, it was clear that the parents and faculty liked and appreciated Pamela’s work, but they also noted a lack of organization and general confidence in her job. Pamela decided to discuss this with the head of school.

Pamela’s head of school understood the frustration that Pamela was experiencing. She suggested that they seek help from an outside consultant who could work directly on issues particular to their school and Pamela’s situation. Ultimately, eduINNOVATIONS was hired to help out.

In consulting to Pamela and her head, eduINNOVATIONS identified several areas to target in their work together:

Time management, including an assessment of who does what and how work is delegated in the middle school
Aligning the school’s mission with the work of the middle school head
Developing a vision for the future of the middle school
Building leadership skills, especially in the area of conflict management

Pamela and her administrative coach worked on the areas identified and ultimately determined that Pamela’s frustrations with time stemmed from an inherent lack of organization. She practiced some of the baseline tools of time management and began delegating more of the “little stuff” to her administrative assistant and a young faculty member who had expressed an interest in learning more about administrative work. Pamela’s reflections on her style vis-à-vis the school’s mission unfolded into a professional vision statement which provided her focus for her work ahead. She learned, too, how to listen well, mediate conflict, and set parameters in how she interacted with students, faculty and parents, not allowing them to exhaust her by each day’s end. Additionally, Pamela, with some support, learned to structure more effective meeting agendas. When the school year had ended, Pamela asserted that the opportunity to work with a coach - with whom she could speak without fear of repudiation or wasting an administrative colleague’s valuable time - had provided her with the kind of skills-building and reflective practice she had lacked in her previous four years at the school. She had a clear sense of where she wanted to lead the middle school - and how to do it.

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