Ben’s Blog #2

The summer of 2011 will long be remembered in the Jackson Barlow’s household as “The Long, Broiling Summer Before Bryson.”  Our son Bryson Wyatt is due in one month, and the heat is never abating.  The instant I step out the back door to let the dogs out at five A.M., the heat slides over me like a warm, wet tongue – it is oppressive and stifling, and I wish that my very pregnant wife could get one moment of respite.  The two weeks following summer term were blurs of activity: new house, baby showers, family visits, unpacking, settling in.  On a steamy, sultry Sunday afternoon, Jeannie and I stood exhausted on the front porch, waving goodbye to the last of some visiting family as they departed for Kentucky. 

  The next day – one full week early, unbeknownst to me until later on – I walked into the dusty, box- and furniture-filled main hallway of the otherwise very empty Brandon Middle School, and I began a new role, in a new school, within a new student age range, amongst new faculty.  As I sit typing in my small office above the library, the floors are a shiny and stately gray, the boxes and furniture are replaced in their respective classrooms, and the hallways are filled with human activity of the teaching sort.  My first weeks have been about change vast and specific, immediate and gradual.  

My evolving role in the two schools in which the internship places me is a complex matrix where I am a subordinate, yet a superior, an outsider, yet a school leader.  My mentor provides me with many opportunities to grow and learn, teaches me policy as he shapes it, includes me in managerial decisions as he disseminates authority to his APs, and shares his critical views on personnel issues as they arise.  I have asked question upon question each day, pouring through the reasoning behind decisions made, scrutinizing the rationale for decisions to be made.  I have teased questions from assessment data, spying glimmers of opportunity for the elusive “growth piece.”  Transitioning from the classroom to the administration team has been challenging for me in terms of viewpoint – I am unaccustomed to the crucial interplay that occurs between administration team members concerning the daily goings-on in schools. 

My relationship with the staff at BMS is changing already.  In the first weeks, a few teachers came by, straightened up desks and tables, placed posters on walls, readied lessons and materials for the first few days – but there was hardly interaction.  On Convocation Day (district-wide faculty meeting), we met as a staff in the afternoon, and I was able to meet and chat with many of them.  The English staff enlisted me to aid in the creation of an updated technology permission letter; the ICT teachers asked me to help them instruct teachers in our new grading and attendance software operations.  I am becoming known as a source of information and as a solution-seeker. 

I think the most noticeable change has occurred in the scope of my power to affect necessary change.  For instance, I helped a recommended student enroll in the Academic Intervention Program, and his mother called me personally to thank me for my efforts.  The simple act of completing this paperwork and moving this boy into a situation in which he could succeed was a powerful reminder to me of the control administrators possess in their schools.  In another instance, I joined a Language Arts meeting to help adjust the direction of lessons as teachers aligned with Common Core Standards.  Fortunately, our administrator has his eyes on the road ahead, planning for next year’s results with adjustments this year.  Going through the process of directing policy while accounting for culture is a delicate operation, and I am thoroughly enjoying this rare opportunity to learn within a culture built upon effective teaching and learning.  Tomorrow is Open House, and the kids come Monday.  PC11 part two has begun in earnest. 

 Rankin County Convocation at the Hinds Community College Muse Center – the bands greeted teachers as they walked in like a Pep Rally setting.