A Blog Post...Finally!

My last post, penned in June (just over six months ago), was written with joy and trepidation after having been hired into the pool of potential VPs, ready to wait for my chance when a spot came open. I'll be honest that at the time, I anticipated a good six months - if not a year - before that chance came. Imagine my surprise, then, when a few short weeks later I got the call that the time had come! The movement of one administrator in the district had created a domino effect, and the result was a position - for ME - at Abby Middle! I quite literally danced with joy at the news (much to the amusement of my fellow shoppers, as I was in the Sooke grocery store parking lot at the time).

Why then, you ask, have I not taken the time to chronicle my adventures as a new vice principal since then? Good question!

I sometimes feel like I've barely had time to breathe, let alone pause to write my thoughts in a coherent manner. I started my role as an administrator slowly in August, puttering away in my new office for the first two weeks, and then diving into the job more fully with new staff interviews, planning for new student orientation, and trying to get a handle on all that my new job entailed. I thought briefly, then, of writing a blog post outlining my thoughts on the position thus far - but weekends were spent dreaming about work and popping in to school, and no writing was done.

Then September hit. I thought it would be great to write a blog outlining the first month as a new VP. Ha! September bled into October, and November, and then December. I have a post that I began sometime in October, and it gives a brief glimpse into my thoughts at the time:

"The past two weeks have been fairly incredible in terms of student behaviour. [My principal] and I felt like pinballs, ricocheting from one incident to the other. Objectively we recognize that not every student in the school was hitting, swearing, ignoring teacher requests, and destroying school property. But boy, oh, boy - for a few days there, it sure felt like the whole of the 700 student population had decided to emulate the Lord of the Flies."

Really, that incredible feeling of ricocheting continued through to the Christmas holiday. Only now, on the last day of the holiday, have I pulled out my laptop and turned my thoughts toward school (okay, that's not entirely true; but this is the first day that I pulled out my laptop, anyway). I guess that's the biggest change I've noticed with taking on the "administrator" title: I never stop thinking about school. It's always there, either niggling away gently in the corner of my mind while I'm with my family or watching a movie or working in the yard; or banging away - front and centre - when I'm trying to sleep. I recognize that some of that persistent thought will dissipate once I'm more used to the job and the learning curve evens out some. However, I suspect it is something that is part of the role that will never fully go away. Like those administrators before me, I will need to come to a place of peace with that sense of constant responsibility.

I'm looking forward to the challenge; and I'm looking forward, too, to being able to look back in a year's time to see my growth. So I'd better keep writing, so I have something to look at!