Inside the Trenches of the Principal: Week 34

This week started out with an unexpected (and hopefully) final reminder from Mother Nature that it was still winter. Snow kept us out on Monday and with a delayed opening on Tuesday. With my lead custodian sick, my assistant principal, lead secretary, and I jumped into clean-up mode and shoveled and salted the sidewalks. I obviously didn’t have to wait long to figure out what my next new “role” was going to be after trying out secretary and cafeteria staff in weeks prior! All of these chances to try out different positions in the school inspired an idea for my staff in April! Details soon …

I also got to observe several of my teachers who went with me to RCA last week come back fired up and already making changes! I had three teachers get lab coats and start decorating them like my friend CJ Wallace! I walked into Ms. Stauffer’s room on Tuesday and she already had the students standing on chairs and rearranging her room. While I have “given permission” for these types of things to happen since the beginning of the year, I know it requires people to “see it” firsthand to truly understand, which is why I’ve been so pleased being able to bring almost 2/3 of my staff to conferences this year to experience quality PD.

We also did a “Kindness Campaign” on Friday at Moore. I saw on Facebook several posts about the “walk outs” and “walk ups” across the country in middle and high schools, so I wanted to try something that would be appropriate for elementary to go along with the theme of simply being kind to one another. I sent out a Remind message to my staff Thursday night to ask them to think of ways to have the kids show kindness to each other on Friday … writing post it notes to each other … writing kind words about a person on their desk with dry erase markers … and so on. My assistant principal and I did a presentation on our Kindness Campaign at Friday Rally as well. I saw amazing efforts from students and classes on Friday, including a kindness quilt, notes for each other, and words of appreciation.

Finally, with St. Patrick’s Day here, a couple of my kindergarten classes did the “leprechaun destroyed the room” trick. I’ve never been able to see that up close and personal since I traditionally was teaching upper grades. Oh my goodness, their reactions are priceless. The pure amazement on their face is worth the efforts. I have a great video from one of the classes on my Twitter that is worth the view!