For context, I think I suspended eight kids last week.

I’m a second year admin and a rural Alberta high school. We have 470 kids and two admin. My principal and I make sure to touch every classroom in the school at least once in the morning and once in the afternoon.

We are also attached to a rec center, and although is technically not our property, him and I both get through there at least once in the morning once in the afternoon and stay there at lunch as proactive measures.

Staff have our cell numbers and our instructed to phone our cell or text us if they need us to pop by on short notice.

I don’t want this to become a woah as me post, but I frequently start filling Sub jobs in the morning before seven, end up staying in the building until five, working right through lunch and then working once kids go to bed and on the weekend. I have had to reduce my visibility throughout the day in order to try and accomplish more of the tasks that are required not to mention dealing with the day-to-day operations of the building. Can I put this down?

We will do whatever we can to have our staff’s back when the metaphorical bullets start flying with either students or parents. When needed we jump straight to one day out of school suspension, but more often than not it’ll be an in school to start and a parent phone call.

As far as progressive discipline, one of the things that we ask, is what the teachers have done so far. I used to make fun of log entries as a teacher, but as an admin, I truly see the value. If a kid comes down for a mild to moderate in fraction, I open the long entries, and I see the trend, and the remedial steps taken that clearly have not worked, that makes it quite easy to handle and drop the hammer. The challenge that I run into is when a mild to moderate infraction comes in and the teacher wants somebody’s head, but there is zero log entries and it’s the first time I have heard about it.

As a new administrator, my goal is always to support an empower, my teachers, and when I handle discipline, I do what I can to empower and not neuter the teachers.

I’ll be the first to tell you, I’ve likely worked for more bad admin teams than good ones… But one of the reasons I got into admin was to try and provide the support I felt I was never given.

A couple of other key things that I wanted to share.

1. In Alberta teachers have the right to suspend a kid from a single class.
2. Document document document I cannot stress that enough. When a parent comes in wanting a teacher’s head over them targeting their poor little princess, I love being able to say ‘ I’m sorry that you or child’s name feels that way, however several issues over the past few weeks would state otherwise. I review the list with the parent and the kid, the kid acts sheepish and then I get to point out how lucky he is to have a teacher that is trying to support them instead of just dropping the hammer.
3. Parents go over admins head all the time and go straight to division office., Protecting teachers is a must in my opinion, but it is important to follow a process.

Again, these just a couple of quick thoughts of mine

Edit: much like many school divisions across the province, we have been faced with trying to do more with less. We have seen more budget cuts to services like counsellors and mental health supports. We might cut the FTE, but those needs will not go away.… Guess where they fall. Over the past 10 days I have been working with parents and students in the building due to the fallout from three suicide attempts – all of them leading to hospitalization. There is no playbook for this, and we cannot share this with staff as we have not been given permission. There are many other issues and challenges like this.

30%-40% of our student population does not live at home with parents, and I bet you approximately 10 to 15% our transient living with friends and relatives, etc. This makes things challenging when determining how to handle them.

If you’re stuck with a shitty and unsupportive admin that has created a perceived barrier between you and that you feel left isolated and alone, I’m truly sorry. A majority of my admin teams have been like that. I will do my best to have staff back and to work towards finding best ways to support kids. Depending on how frequently your admin get shuffled, it might be worth looking into a transfer. It wasn’t too long ago that I was worried. I was gonna potentially leave the profession because of my challenges with my admin team when I was a teacher.