A Sneak Peek Into the Life of An Administrator

I think we all know that the staff at our schools are working extremely hard to make online school possible. But I don’t think we realize how much work goes into doing so. Having everything virtualize may appear to make things easier than it would in-person. But having to constantly change everything on the fly depending on the current status of the world makes it quite the opposite. We have grown to somewhat understand the lives of teachers, but I don’t think we know anything about what our school’s admin does…

Their primary job is to make sure we are ready and confident to tackle the world ahead of us once we graduate. Just a fraction of their job includes “hiring personnel, providing feedback to teachers, helping students to solve problems, implementing district policy, making sure the building is safe, partnering with parent and community groups, providing building professional development, reviewing building data to inform decisions, participating in IEP teams, supervising at games, and many other things,”. While we are learning about machines in mechanics or critical points in calculus, they are busy assisting teachers, counselors, and classified staff. Sometimes, you may even see one pop into your class for observation once in a while.

“I also work on projects like systematizing support for students or planning for various drop-off or pickup events for students.”

— Colette Roche, RHS Associate Principal

I mean, that’s a LOT of work for one person, and most of it goes unnoticed by us students. Think about it: do we even know exactly what all our admin does for us?

It’s no secret that our administrators have meetings like us (although, this applies to even pre-COVID). They attend both scheduled meetings, which can last 30 minutes to 2.5 hours, and impromptu meetings, which are generally 5–10 minutes. Yet, the number of meetings they have each week gave me a bit of a shock.

“Most weeks I have 20–25 scheduled meetings and another 10 or so impromptu meetings. Scheduled meetings range from 30 minutes to 2.5 hours and impromptu meetings are typically 5–10 minutes.”

— Colette Roche, RHS Associate Principal

If that didn’t tire me out just by listening enough already, it was nothing compared to how I reacted when I learned many emails she received daily.

“Generally, I receive somewhere between 30–80 emails and probably another 40–50 Teams messages each day.”

— Colette Roche, RHS Associate Principal

Imagine reading and replying to all those emails and messages every day! I get lazy after just answering merely 5 emails. Before you get frustrated when you don’t get an immediate response to your next email, stop and think about how hard they are working to get back to you as fast as they can, because 30–80 emails for many is tiring.

…And this was just pre-COVID. Along with us students and teachers, their jobs have altered.

“Fundamentally, my job has the same goals and purpose. But interacting with people is very different. I used to drop into physical classrooms before and after school to say hello to teachers and hear what they were excited about for the day. In the same way, I used to talk with students in the hallways or cafeteria. Many of my interactions were of an informal nature and that doesn’t quite work in the virtual environment. A side effect of that is that my workday involves significantly fewer steps!”

— Colette Roche, RHS Associate Principal

And we need to remember, through all this frustration with the pandemic- schedules getting changed, events getting canceled, clubs being restricted, sports being banned- they want the same thing as us: for everything to go back to normal. “I think, like everyone, I want everything to move quickly. But there are good reasons for following processes and procedures, so it’s helpful for me to remember that.” They have a reason for all these changes and modifications: to keep us safe, while still providing us a quality high school experience as much as they can. In fact, during this time, they are working hard to enrich this experience from the comfort of our homes, specifically figuring out ways to connect us when COVID-19 has taken in-person interaction from all of us.

“The pandemic has had terrible consequences for many people locally, nationally, and globally. What is most frustrating for most people is how little control we have over the pandemic and its impact on us. One of the things that my parents instilled in me was to focus on the things that are within my control. The pandemic and pandemic responses have helped to highlight our common desire for community, for connection, for belonging. At RHS we have a vision of being One HERD, One Home, and I am hopeful that the renewed awareness of this deep human need will help us to embrace more deeply creating a connected community where everyone feels belonging. So thinking and planning with the admin team about how to help bring this vision to reality is highly motivating for me.”

— Colette Roche, RHS Associate Principal

Don’t forget that they can only work with what is within their control, which is virtually nothing. Yet, they were still able to build an incredible experience for us for the 2020–21 school year in such a short amount of time, trying to make what we had in-person at school available online.

So, how can we as students help? Tell them how you’re feeling about the changes. Give them feedback. Ask for help. This is the kind of data they need to evaluate the effectiveness of their implementations and see if they are headed in the right direction.

“If you are struggling to find assignments, not sure how to do something, not sure how to organize your to-do list, are feeling overwhelmed let us know as soon as you can. Because we can’t see you, we don’t have the clues of body language or a blank paper to know that you need something. You are important to us, and it’s so much harder for us in a virtual environment to show you that.”

— Colette Roche, RHS Associate Principal

— Nisha Shastry, Program Management Intern

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