Where Do We Go From Here? Moving Forward After the Unexpected

Where do we go From Here? Moving Forward After the Unexpected.

In a strange, but not surprising coincidence, the above statement was asked of me on three separate occasions today. One from a student after an incident, one from a teacher as an email heading, and one from a teacher after a conversation about a student.

The simple answer is, “I don’t know.”
However, we have a large group of educated adults, and we have lots of skills and background knowledge to help us move forward. Let’s sit down and figure it out.

Leaving Campus

A couple of students left campus during the school day. This had happened before and happened much more when the Walmart was open; it closed during the middle of last year.

Typically, I would call the parents and let them know that their student left campus and let them know that we have the SRO (Student Resource Officer) looking for them or look for them myself. Our biggest concern is the safety of the child. One of our roles as a public school is to keep kids safe from door to door. Including: on the bus, during release time (Seminary), during p.e, field trips, and on the way from the bus stop to the door.

You can see the problem if the child is supposed to be at school, and they aren’t at school. Again, I am trying to be present and calm throughout the school year. So, I jumped in my car and drove over to see if I could locate the two students. I did.

I know the students well and just pulled over and asked if everything was okay?
I got a blank stare and then was asked, “So what do we know?” I asked them to come back to the school so that we (Counselors, Admin, Psychologists) could talk to them about what was going on.

I let them know that I care about them and drove back to the school. Yes, without the students in my car.  Our principal was waiting, and I caught up with the kids and got them back to class. Counselors jumped in and helped out with the rest, following up with both students.

The Email

When something happens, that doesn’t happen very often the answers and solutions are not as comfortable or easy to find. And, they take longer to implement, because we have to figure out what the solutions are before we can apply them. Chicken/Egg I guess.

I love my principal because he doesn’t get flustered very often. He rarely gets frustrated and has a calmness about him, that helps calm others, myself included. When things are not going as expected, he is at his best. At times, I want to rush into a solution because my personality is to see results and fix things (I am a fixer/doer), but at times, he doesn’t let me.

Honestly, this situation (not student related) will take time, multiple team members, and some training to fix. Like I said earlier, sometimes the best answer is, “I don’t know, let’s figure it out together.” We are going to figure this out together.

Time to decide

I want every one of our students to be successful. I love them and genuinely want them to be happy in life. It’s hard when they don’t see it that way, or don’t see me for me, but see me for my title (Assistant/Vice Principal).

By far the hardest part about being an administrator is that students don’t know me as a teacher or have a clue how I was in the classroom, and developing a relationship can take months or even years. Also, trying to establish a positive connection in a sporadic environment is not the most healthy thing to do. It can be done; it’s just tricky.

A teacher and student got into a disagreement. Both said things out of anger, frustration, and misunderstanding. Both sides had hurt feelings. Looking back over the past two years, I have made mistakes with both the teacher and the student. I haven’t handled situations as timely as needed, or communicated my intentions in a particular way, or at all. I just made decisions based on the information at the time. This lead to visible frustration on my part both in the conversation, and the consequences that I gave.

I took a step back today and spoke with the admin team to get a different perspective. It helped. Sometimes, when faced with the question, “Where do we go from here?” I reply, “Forward.” We have been that way (behind us), and I don’t (Side Note… I just saved my wife from a mosquito…it’s cool to be someone’s superhero) want to go down that road again. Let’s move forward together.