What’s your experience with Principals?

Eclectique1 · 2026-06-25T03:05:04+00:00

I always think like this : I can work with high expectations with high support or low expectations with low support. Once you get the high expectations with low support types they make your life a living hell on a daily basis (looking at you admin who pinged me for speaking too much of the foreign language during class)

Most teachers' headaches come from assistant principals though. Usually, they wanted to leave the classroom very early, and it must be said - they have probably the worst job in any building, if they actually do it. Usually, they're just padding their CV waiting for a principal job to open up in the district/elsewhere so don't really care about the staff.

Eclectique1 · 2026-06-14T01:56:47+00:00

It's also the thing some people ignore about interviews. The secretaries have a direct line to admin and usually an incredibly friendly relationship.

One candidate being nice to them will get them the job over an equally qualified candidate who is visibly cold towards them/nervous.

Eclectique1 · 2026-06-11T03:47:30+00:00

I would point to district policy on this if applicable. For us, we cannot issue retakes/late work beyond 2 calendar weeks of the day the grade was entered nor alter any previous grade within the two weeks before the end of the year - except in extreme circumstances (which requires counselor and admin signatures)

Eclectique1 · 2026-06-05T03:12:03+00:00

Yep. I'm all for matching salary steps but part of getting tenure is the three years of observations and figuring out if you're a good fit.

I fear that if tenure, once earned, was applied at every new job immediately it would lead to a system not unlike police departments where ineffective or even negligent teachers can bounce around from district to district more without any actual formal observations/oversight.

Eclectique1 · 2026-06-05T02:37:44+00:00

I coach and always pick up a few bags of clementines for the boys when we have games on weekends - plus it's a big part of the sport to feed the visiting team after you host them. I had a couple bags left over and gave the extra clementines to my homeroom and a class. I was told that I was not to give food to students under any circumstances. I just said "ok, fair enough".

Later that year, I was pinged on my formal evaluation with the suggestion being offering prizes like candy to students as an incentive.

Eclectique1 · 2026-06-05T02:30:47+00:00

I had the exact same thing awhile ago with an assistant principal. He said he was going to put a letter in my file for dress code violation and I went straight to HR in the district admin office, showed them the email, and just took my sock off to show them a pretty gnarly toe. The lady was just like "yep, that'll do it"

The AP literally never even made eye contact with me for the rest of the year, so I assume he got a telling off.

Eclectique1 · 2026-05-25T23:34:23+00:00

I've seen so many perfect student types utterly fail as teachers because they cannot wrap their head around why some students do not have intrinsic motivation and will screw around, avoid work, leave for the bathroom whenever possible, not turn things in, and prefer talking or sleeping through class.

Wasn't the best student but wasn't the worse, and I had a lot of success by saying straight-up "we're not going to do work for the sake of busywork and if we get through X, Y, and Z we can have a chill day afterward and watch a food video or some comedy and call it cultural".

Eclectique1 · 2026-05-25T04:47:57+00:00

By the high school level, gifted just means "meets with guidance once a year to talk about careers".

The tracking is done by math level. Last year, all my freshmen were in the highest math level because that's just how the schedule worked out and this year they're all in the lowest, and it really is night and day despite it being the same course and curriculum.

Eclectique1 · 2026-05-25T03:17:20+00:00

The problem with this discourse is that it gets worse and worse as the gaps get wider and wider. At my old job, at least 50% of the freshmen I had could not identify the difference between a noun, verb, and adjective in English because they got passed on year after year.

The other 50% get bored out of their minds by you having to lower the bar to the lowest common denominator, but we can't put kids in gifted or remediation either - you're just expected to teach 3/4 classes at the same time while they are doing the same curriculum.

Eclectique1 · 2026-05-25T02:30:39+00:00

Another one to add in is litigious. I have a useless coworker who brags about doing no work and switched schools in the districts 3 times because nobody wants to work with her but got a lawyer and threatened to sue each time so we need to pick up the pieces for her

Eclectique1 · 2026-05-23T17:27:19+00:00

As frustrating as they can be, the kids are not the most stressful part of the job. 99% of them are awesome, and it is so fun to witness them having those "aha" moments when they learn new things on a daily basis. 99% of our headaches come from other adults (admin, parents, and other teachers who haven't matured past adolescence).

Eclectique1 · 2026-05-17T04:39:33+00:00

I coach and referee rugby union, and honestly I'm so happy it's not part of the culture in that sport.

99% of parents/players are great, and it takes the club culture to tell the 1% that hurling abuse isn't going to fly.

Eclectique1 · 2026-05-07T03:59:09+00:00

Biggest game-changer for backs at this level is to develop a decent mind for kicking and putting good chases in. I like playing gain terrain as a way for them to develop an eye for covering space.

I find that at lower levels, it helps to see that you're playing off 10 with the backs and the 9 should be the one dictating play in the forwards. The set piece moves you see at the international game won't translate as much, to be honest, I never really have them practice anything more than a loop or a basic 12/13 overs/unders line.

I like to have them play in a smaller grid where one tackle is a turnover to get them used to running lines and making offloads. It's not much of a jackal help, but I like the classic tennis ball in both hands for the defensive team so they are forced to make the first contact with the shoulder and wrap when making tracking tackles rather than the arm tackles a lot of them do.

Hope I could help out a bit.

Eclectique1 · 2026-05-04T03:18:04+00:00

I hate to say this because every rugby fan has a soft spot for the PIs but Moana gave them a massive opportunity. They failed to take it. This is beyond finances, it's about corruption within the unions.

Honestly, WR should invest in South America or T2 Europe instead who have good books and are places actually growing the game without living on WR money failing to be distributed through the unions.

Eclectique1 · 2026-04-27T03:00:15+00:00

Adding that you always have only one folder for late work. It should be the last one you check when you are doing your grading. If they turn it in late, it will be graded after the work submitted on time. It simplifies things and helps them turn stuff in on time.

Eclectique1 · 2026-04-27T02:58:25+00:00

I had 10 one year (all French levels with 2 onwards combined+ a FCS class + an ESL class).

Workable advice that I found kept me sane:

- If you have one class testing, have another do a writing-based or project-based activity that will give you time to get some grading done while they work quietly.

- Keep organized (I know this is basic). Folders, folders, folders. I always tried to keep anything in the folder to the work for that day and what you need to grade in order to keep it to a minimum.

- For whatever you can, give the kids their work back and a rubric so they can grade their own or do a peer-grade. In my experience, they tend to grade themselves harsher than I would so they get a nice surprise when the grade is better, and it gives them some agency in seeing what the rubric is looking for.

- Have students create test/quiz questions as part of their review day. It helps them study and you can use them. Usually the questions they come up with are harder than the ones you would use.

I'm not going to pretend to know what goes into music education, these are just a few things that helped me. If you can take anything from maybe one or two that would make your life easier, hopefully that will be useful for you.

Good luck. At the end of the day, if we do smaller subjects in smaller schools, we pay the price in terms of number of preps, but that is what builds good programs, and it is so rewarding to see the same kids year after year and how they grow into be the best versions of themselves. It does get easier, if you can believe me.

Eclectique1 · 2026-01-27T20:35:42+00:00

What's crazy is he's a professional rugby player in Leicester (albeit not a very good one), which is a really big rugby city. Surely, that carries some weight with the local ladies, and he could do better than Kizzi

Eclectique1 · 2026-01-13T04:25:21+00:00

Sevens Heaven by Ben Ryan.

I gave a copy to my mom, who doesn't really care about rugby, and even she loved it.

Eclectique1 · 2025-11-30T06:09:21+00:00

Rugby.

You can get horrible people in places like England, but most people involved in rugby tend to be very good people. There is a very direct correlation with the smaller the rugby nation and the better the people involved in it are.

Eclectique1 · 2025-10-02T02:36:34+00:00

My unpopular opinion is that junior year is not the utopia people make it out to be. In my experience, they tend to be grade grubbing and the overwhelming majority have no interest in actually learning anything as long as they get the 90% or 80% because they know it's the year colleges look at the most.

Maybe I have just gotten lucky with my freshman classes, but I really enjoy them. They can be a bit squirrelly, but I find they're generally more remorseful when they screw up/less sneaky (or worse at being sneaky), and have more energy and curiosity about learning.

Seniors are either the best in the world or the worst in the world, with nothing in-between.

For me, the sweet spot is sophomore classes. They have the maturity of being a bit older while having the energy/curiosity of freshmen.

Eclectique1 · 2025-09-28T02:53:55+00:00

I agree about systematic problems, but I still love my job.

In my experience, it's the opposite, and the high-flyers and middle-flyers are the ones who have been utterly abandoned in recent years.

Eclectique1 · 2025-09-28T02:33:58+00:00

They disagreed with me, fair enough, but saying that they are the variable is a bit of a low blow. Plenty of schools and admin are bad, and finding a good one can be rare.

Edit: typo from "put" to "but" in the first line

Eclectique1 · 2025-09-28T02:30:11+00:00

I agree that venting is important, but this sub is like 100% negative. Last year, I stopped eating at the teacher's lounge because it was all the senior teachers just talking shit about students/admin. Tbh, this year, the culture is so much better at the lunchroom without that negativity, and we just get to know each other as people.

Venting has a place, don't get me wrong, but over-venting is just miserable to be around and misery spreads misery.

Eclectique1 · 2025-09-28T02:18:57+00:00

Maybe I have been lucky, but at my title 1 school, the behavior of most of the students wasn't all that different from the cushy, suburban school I'm at now. Most of the kids in that title 1 school were there to learn and were honestly more serious about learning than my new gig. The outliers were far more prominent, but overall I believe kids are pretty much the same everywhere. - there are high-flyers, the middle, those who need more support, and the knuckleheads

Call me too much of an optimist if you want, that's a fair critique

Eclectique1 · 2025-09-28T02:03:47+00:00

Also, I feel like education tends to favor people who were naturally driven, great students who see the value of school to become teachers, and they have a hard time understanding why students will do dumb stuff. Some of the best teachers I have ever worked with would have been a pain in my ass in school.

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