This is Leadership?

Here's a story about one of the principals from another teacher. I can't decide if my favorite part was that she had to call and tell the district that they had openings because they didn't notice or if it was that the principal didn't feel like showing her where her classroom was.

I was hired two days before school started, (After calling all the elementary schools in the city to find out where the openings were and then informing the district that they in fact did have jobs to fill). I went to the office to introduce myself to the principal and see if I could see my classroom so that I could get it ready for kids. When I walked in to the office it was utter chaos. I saw the principal in her office. I knocked and said, "Hi, my name is ---, and I was just hired to teach second grade here." Her response was "OK." I said, "I was wondering if I could go and see the classroom I am going to be in so I can set it up for the students tomorrow. Her response was something along the lines of I can't, I am too busy. So I stood in the office for about 10 minutes in a state of shock. When finally another teacher saw me and asked if he could help me. I explained my situation to him, and he took me up to the classroom. (which by the way, had all of the desks and chairs piled up in the middle of the classroom, nothing on the wall, no chalk for the chalkboard, and not a single piece of curriculum or literature to be found)

Five years ago: Surviving by Meanness
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Stuffed Animals

There are several much more serious stories I was going to share, but I'm not in the mood to be made sad tonight, so I'll tell you all about the stuffed animals. This is a post that needs images so someday when I have or borrow a working scanner, I will add the photos. A few years into teaching, I joined Freecyle. For those of you who don't know Freecycle, it's a group of people in any given community who are on an email list to get rid of their old stuff and get stuff from other people. It's a fabulous form of recycling. Somebody posted that they had a huge bag of stuffed animals in good condition to give away and I decided to grab it for my class. I thought that some of the kids would like the stuffed animals, but I certainly didn't think they'd all be into them. Kids grow up really fast in that neighborhood, and when you have six-year olds talking about how they walk to school alone because their parents say they're "grown," and how

A Loss

(I have been putting off finishing this blog post for months. You'll see why) Today, I was cleaning a bookshelf and I found the journal from one of my third-grade students, who I call Fred in my book , in 2001. I still had it because he didn't come to the last day of school to get his stuff this year and I guess it got put in a pile and somehow I've kept it with me. He didn't come to the last day of school, probably because his family was a mess: dad in prison, mom in an abusive relationship, all the kids (understandably) acting out violently. Fred was expelled from our school in second grade for hitting a teacher. Then he was expelled from the other school, I don't know why, at the end of second grade. He came back on the condition from the administration that he be in my class because I had him as a student in first grade and he listened to me and worked well with me. We had a really good relationship, although Fred was definitely not easy to have in class.

A New Prison, Part Two

Second very long part of the prison visit report. After we got all the paperwork filled out and went through the metal detector, we got visitation slips with the name of the inmate, and made our way over to the other building for visitation. This is not maximum security so thankfully you can just sit next to the inmates, and not be separated by glass or have to use a telephone to talk. First, you get a gate unlocked and go into a holding pen that is of course in direct sunlight (or rain if it's that season) and surrounded by fences topped with razor wire. You wait there until the gate at the other end is unlocked. This holding pen was a little bigger and less claustrophobic than the other prison (I do not have any claustrophobia and I came very close to a panic attack once at the other place) and they opened the other gate more quickly. Then you walk, again in blazing sunlight (or rain) to the visitation building. This one was less of a walk than the other prison but I still

Bronwyn Harris, Author

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