Looking for the positive opposite

During my time in school as a student, I never had an experience that involved an assistant or vice principal. Mind you, this was not because I was the perfect child with wings and a halo who never broke a rule, but because I went to Glacier View from kindergarten to graduation.

Glacier View has 30-40 students and no need for an administrative team. In fact, the first and only time I got to work in a school with assistant principals before becoming one was when I did my student teaching at Wasilla High School. That said, I was not fully aware of the affect the title “assistant (or vice) principal” has to one’s reputation.

I will tell you this: many adults who had interactions with an assistant principal during their childhoods do not recall a nurturing, caring, supportive role-model-type person so much as a stern, robotic dispenser of justice in the form of suspensions and expulsions. Similarly, the title also did not portend a glamorous and elevated career for me amongst my teaching colleagues. The second most common question was, “Why would you want to continually deal with all of the discipline problems, with those kids who are always in trouble?” The first was generally, “Really? You want to be a principal?”

Ironically, even when I interviewed for my current position at Palmer Junior Middle School, I was asked how I would handle being involved with the majority of the disciplinary matters at the school. My answer is as true now as it was then.

I told my fellow teachers my interviewees, as I tell anyone who asks me now, is that I have the rare privilege to get to know kids on a one-to-one basis. Sure, the kid might land in my office because of a rule violation, maybe a misunderstanding, maybe social issues. Whatever the case, there is no rule in the AP’s handbook that says I have to find out why kids wind up in my office, hand out consequences and send them on their way. I have the exceptional opportunity to really get to know kids – and an opportunity to understand why they do some of the crazy things they do. In fact, some of the best relationships I have built at PJMS with students are with those kids who I see on a regular basis because they have found themselves in the office — again.

Just to be clear, the significant time I spend with these kids is not to entertain myself or to waste taxpayers’ money. In the end, my goal is to change negative behavior into the positive opposite behavior, and I’m hoping that building good relationships with them is an effective way of doing so over time. In fact, research shows that clear structure and building good relationships with kids are fast-tracks to successful behavior and that the vice principal’s tools of the past such as out-of-school suspension and expulsion, though necessary at times, are not generally conducive to a change in behavior.

To be sure, the job at times is overwhelming, but by getting to know kids, talking with them, building trust, nurturing good relationships, communicating clearly and keeping the goal of a positive change in behavior in mind, it’s possible to get through the toughest of situations that face the “dreaded” assistant principal.

Claudia Berkley is assistant principal at Palmer Junior Middle School.