It’s mindboggling the number of things that a person can suddenly find themselves involved with all of a sudden. Over the past few weeks I’ve been looking at the “art” of supervision and how to help the teachers in our school become better. This is not an easy task because each person has a unique personality that has to be taken into account during the process. In order to best help the teachers, I’ve been reading about different supervision ideas, like the 3-Minute Walk-Through, with the hope that I can better assist people in growing and changing. This can be a somewhat stressful thing, especially when there are changes that need to take place. In my role of administrator, I know that part of what I need to do is lessen this “stress” for the others in the school.
As the educational leader in the school, I also realize that part of my job is to set an example. However, when life gets busy, I’ve noticed that some of the things that I thought were a habit suddenly become foreign and I find myself wondering/wandering around trying to pull it together. The following is a list of things that I’ve noticed have “popped” up that just add to the “stress” of “administrating.”
1. My top goes missing. Jumpdrive top that is. This past week I cannot count the number of times that I’ve lost this pesky little thing. Now, I usually have a spot where I put it. This week I’ve found it in the following unlikely places: bathroom counter, shirt pocket, library desk and secretary’s desk. Each time I’ve wandered around trying to find the darn thing losing all kinds of precious moments. My first thought was “What was I doing in the bathroom with it?”
2. Papers get misplaced. This week I’ve had trouble keeping papers with which I’m working. I don’t know why but I’ve left them: in the staffroom on the lunch table, on my secretary’s desk, in a classroom and, yes, in the bathroom. I take them with me to go see someone and, oops, can’t find them. Again, the bathroom? (They’re not casual reading material!)
3. Misplace my laptop. Yes. It happened. I was going to do some observations and was interrupted on route by my janitor. We went to look at some things and when I finally was ready to go back to my observations, no laptop. Thank goodness, it wasn’t in the bathroom but I did find it in one of the storage rooms. I had to retrace my whole adventure with the janitor.
4. My clothes. Yes, you are reading this right. On Wednesday, we had our Halloween costume parade. Of course I had to dress up – a chicken including orange tights! Thanks goodness, no pictures of that! When I returned to the bathroom to get dressed, my clothes were gone. Now, I could have sworn I got dressed there. Where did I find them? In the office. Seems I must have forgotten that I got dressed there. I thought the secretary was snickering a bit too much that afternoon. (I spent most of the afternoon walking the halls and teaching dressed as a chicken.)
5. My class. Friday I had a double period of my CPT20 class. Lost them. I went to the lab and not one was there. Where did I leave them? They were there before lunch. Seems they had a rather long math test and the teacher had taken them from my class to write the test. He did tell me but, when I showed up after lunch and there were no students I immediately went to check my schedule. I’m sure I had a class. I actually spent about 30 seconds wondering what was going on. Then I remembered where they were. Phew. That would have been a hard one to explain.
6. My mind. This has been the hardest thing to find lately. I seem to be going in one too many directions and then, poof, I’ve lost my mind. Friday I asked my secretary if she had seen it because I’d misplaced it. I thought maybe it would be like my clothes. No luck. I’m actually still looking for it.
I don’t know if anyone else has such things happen but during time of excess business, things I thought were habit, like putting my jumpdrive lid in my desk drawer, I find aren’t actually habits. Please excuse me as I have to go look for my mind. Maybe I’ll check the bathroom!