Professional Stretching

I have often said I am a teacher not an administrator. I have no desire to seek a job as a principal. All I want to do is teach. God though is stretching me with an expanded job description.

The school restructured the administrative hierarchy this year in an attempt to streamline what gets done and to eliminate the overload of responsibility placed on key people in the past. The new hierarchy is running on a "team" model with "captains" that lead a small group of people. These captains then report to the next person up the ladder. So I am the head of the English department which means I am the "captain" of the team. I am a member of the department heads team which is where I report in and am held accountable. The new model means that the English teachers do not report to the principal first with their concerns - they report to me. Before, I basically sat in department heads' meetings as a presence, submitted a budget and looked over textbooks. I did do some observations but overall the old department head role was semi-hands off. At the beginning of the school year, the department heads had a 3 hour meeting in which we talked business but also in which the principal took us through our new roles. His challenge is that we are in constant contact with our staff. He challenged us that it is our job to insure our teachers are content, challenged, and supported. We are now collecting weekly lesson plans on Monday, which I then go over to see what is happening. I have almost daily contact with my high school teachers to answer questions or to just listen to their ideas for teaching. I have a weekly meeting with the middle school teacher to help her talk through her lessons. I find my prep periods are often spent on department head business as I strive to fulfill my newly aligned role. I will soon start first quarter "check ups" where I sit down with each grade level teacher and discuss curriculum changes needed and concerns. I will do this 4 times in a year. Over senior trip I will do my classroom observations for first semester, which means I will sit in one class per teacher and have a conference afterward to discuss strengths and suggestions.

I am also the "captain" for the language arts team for vertical alignment. We need to check the structure of our curriculum from grades 1-12 in order to meet a timed recommendation from our accreditation report. By June 2010 we must have a report showing how our curriculum in every discipline works from elementary to high school. This new facet of my job will mean a few trips to the elementary school to observe and look at documents. I have an elementary rep on my committee and I am fascinated to find out what happens in elementary language arts. I am getting a more well rounded picture of what happens as students grow.

Added to the running of the department and teaching my classes, I will be supervising a student teacher from Sept. 21 until Christmas break. She comes from Cedarville and is enthusiastic about getting into the classroom. She is a bit anxious when she considers she is only 4 years older than the seniors. I want to be a good cooperating teacher that will help her start a successful career as a teacher.