Member-only story
The Importance of a Strong Administration
A good leader is vital to a strong school
In 2022, I was at a crossroads in my teaching career. Honestly, I was mentally and emotionally exhausted. I was in my 8th year of teaching and feeling the burnout badly. For months, I contemplated quitting the profession. It was a job I loved, and I felt I had finally found my calling. But things had changed; I was not sure if teaching was something I wanted to do anymore.
There were several factors that made me contemplate this change. Like so many of my fellow educators, the COVID-19 pandemic caused major changes in our schools and student interactions. One huge change was the effort I saw from students, and we gave them grace in those first few years. After all, many of them had not been in a classroom, either in person or virtually, in over a year. We focused more on social-emotional learning than content.
However, it was not just that. I saw more behavior issues. The school where I taught then had a rougher clientele. We were in a low-income school, and we had all of the problems that can come with poverty in our student population. This was not anything new, but the behavior problems were magnified, especially as the school began to take in more students than the building was built to handle.
