As an aspiring administrator, I have been given the opportunity to be part of a Leadership program through my district. One of the perks of being part of this group is that you get to shadow or fill in for assistant principals. The first time that I was called upon made me nervous and excited all in the same moment. I was excited since this is a new opportunity to learn and grow in my journey of becoming an administrator. The feeling of being nervous was due to the fact that this was going to be new for me.
One of the first things I got to do when filling in for an assistant principal was to deliver the morning announcements. As a teacher you may snicker at person reading the announcements, but when you are the one that is going to be delivering the morning announcements you quickly have a whole new respect for the poor administrator that usually makes the announcements.
Some of the interesting things that happen are that you get the opportunity to walk into classes and observe the great teaching that is taking place in the building. It is interesting to see all of the different ways that lessons are being delivered at the various grade levels. The most exciting part is to walk into a class where they are having small book clubs and the students are the ones leading the conversations and discussing their perspective on the characters and the book. Also, being in the world where technology is key it is important to see how technology is helping students learn and grow. Technology has opened the door to where you can look things up and have interactive assignments for your kiddos.
Moreover, through my experiences I am learning the balance of time management and multi-tasking. These are key skills that an administrator must have in order to be successful. At times it may seem that everything is a priority, but as it was explained to us that sometimes things can wait and you have to be able to gauge what needs to be taken care of first. Additionally, you have to be able to stop what you are doing at a moments notice to handle a discipline, cover lunch duty, organize guest speakers schedules, and find time to get into the classrooms.
