A principal colleague of mine shared an analogy for describing the passage of time in a school year. A former principal had passed it on to her. She treats each school year like a week and assigns each month a ½ day. September is the equivalent of Monday morning, October is Monday afternoon; November equals Tuesday morning, etc…
We have arrived at Friday. As a matter of fact, Friday afternoon is right around the corner.
But before we get ahead of ourselves, here are a few reminders to help get through ‘Friday’ before the weekend is upon us.
1. Be at your best. Joe Atherton, a mentor of mine, once told me that I needed my best teaching in May and June. Students need engaging, relevant activities all year long. But this is crucial now. Cross-curricular, challenging, engaging and interesting should be your buzz words.
2. Keep yourself at your best. We have difficult jobs. We have high expectations of ourselves as individuals and as a profession. We move at a quick pace. To maintain that, we need rest, exercise and healthy choices. Know when to work hard but know when to stop.
3. Be diligent and vigilant. Many students struggle with the pending end of the school year. They are going to miss friends, miss structure, and miss routine and, yes, some of them will even miss us. They show that struggle in many different ways. A common one is to push behaviour boundaries. Be diligent in your commitment to remain fair and consistent in your expectations. Be vigilant when supervising students in your classroom, the hallways, the yard and other common areas. Take advantage of the relationships you have built up all year with our students. They know you; you know them. That’s important to remember.
4. Be OK with the idea that you probably didn’t complete all the things you set out to complete. The wonderful thing about our curricula in Ontario is that it is built on ‘Big Ideas’. If you fret over the small menu items, you’ll go mad. Let it go. Focus on doing less, but doing it better.
5. Be prepared and plan for the minutia. Remember that there are responsibilities at year-end (report cards, OSRs, packing/preparing for cleaning, etc…) Don’t let them creep up. Plan to tackle some of these tasks ahead of time. Set a schedule for each small task.
6. ‘Friday’ tends to be a busy day. Keep everyone informed of what’s going on. This helps everyone (students, parents, staff, community) manage ‘Friday’ a little better and manage it together.
7. Have fun. Learning new things as well as reflecting on past learning should be a celebration.
This is by no means a ‘Words to live by’ or ‘Seven critical things every educator must know’, but just the ramblings of a teacher who has been through ‘Friday afternoon’ from the classroom and the office almost a dozen times each. I hope, if you got this far, you found it helpful.
Principal Learning 