John Thompson: Pity the Disposable Principals
John Thompson, historian and teacher, says that he usually doesn’t worry about principals, but this piece demonstrates that he knows the stress they are under in the current context of fire first, aim later.
Principals and assistant principals give up the best job in the world, teaching, for one of the most stressful of careers. In my experience, they do it in order to help more students. Three excellent articles describe the additional pressure that is being placed on principals in an age of reform.
Clearly, these efforts will not be sustainable if we do not start treating school leaders as valuable resources that can’t be squandered.
My principals all had to claim to believe that better instruction, data, “High Expectations!,” and leadership were enough to turn around the highest-challenge schools. The few who really believed that systemic progress could be driven by instruction within the four walls of the classroom could be annoying, but they were sincere. For instance, one of those frustrating assistant principals faced down a student with a loaded gun rather than take the safe path and allow the police to handle it.
For over a decade, the prime method of turning around schools with the highest concentrations of generational poverty and kids who have survived extreme trauma has been to use up and throw away dedicated teachers and principals. Chalkbeat NY’s Geoff Decker, in “Q&A with Automotive High’s Principal: ‘There’s Always Pressure in This Building,’” featured one of those principals, Caterina Lafergola. She has fought the good fight at New York City’s Automotive High School since 2011.
Lafergola says, “You can’t do this work unless you love it because it will chew you up and spit you out. I love the work. I love the kids.”
The principal cites two huge problems, the “compliance issues” that a school leader must handle, and students’ trauma. Lafergola says of her students, “They’re traumatized. Last year, one of our babies was murdered. Died like a dog in the street.”
Automotive is no longer a “madhouse,” where it took 20 minutes to transition between classes and where there were rampant gang affiliations and drugs. If the standard school improvement model was working, by now Automotive would be creating some stability. But, of Lafergola’s 32 teachers, 14 are brand new. On the other hand, perhaps under Chancellor Carmen Farina and Mayor Bill de Blasio and with the implementation of Restorative Practices, more improvement will be John Thompson: Pity the Disposable Principals | Diane Ravitch's blog - Linkis.com:
