It's 7:45 a.m. and a mother's face turns red as she says, "It isn't fair!
The other kid started the trouble with my son yesterday." The mother is practically
shouting the words into the face of the principal of a high school on Manhattan's
Lower East Side.
Almost instinctively, principal Virginia Hutchinson knows exactly what
to do. She steps into the hall and quickly spots the culprit. This is just
one of the hundreds of different ways an inner city high school principal
faces a new day.
From complaints about incompetent teaching to meetings about abuse, a principal
sees it all. That means that they must be able to deal with it all at once,
often putting in 10-hour days resolving one type of conflict or another. When
principals and vice-principals describe the most difficult issue of their
day, the majority point to conflict management.
The fact that principals deal with so many emotionally charged issues every
day may surprise non-educators, but for high school principals it's just a
typical day. Each and every day they face a barrage of demands, including
telephone calls, email, visits from parents, students needing
immediate attention, and support staff whose work needs to be directed.
Hutchinson's workday starts at 7 a.m. with an hour of paperwork while trying
to cover any teacher absences. At 8 a.m. she personally supervises the arrival
of 426 students. "Since the teachers don't go to work till 8:40, the principal
and assistant principal have to greet the kids -- except I don't have an assistant
principal."
This scenario is very familiar to principal Rick Shave. "I get in by 6:45
every day, even though classes don't start until 8:30. That way I can get
my paperwork done before there are any major problems or crises." Shave puts
in close to 70 hours a week.
Hutchinson and Shave also have the responsibility of stopping the chaos
of the streets from coming into their classrooms. But Hutchinson doesn't have
sole control over school custodians, security guards, guidance counselors,
special education teachers and lunch room workers. To be effective, a principal
has to be as much a psychologist and police officer as educator and administrator.
"You also have to have a sense of humor and you just have to be really flexible,"
adds Shave.
With the conflicts and long hours, why do most principals keep going? "You
get to work with a lot of good people. And you do have an impact on a lot
of kids' lives in terms of curriculum and life skills. Working with teenagers
is probably the best job in the world," says Shave.
It's especially gratifying when a former student comes back and Shave gets
to see that he's truly made a difference. "Kids come back as adults and you
see you've made a difference. You do have some kind of impact on the world."
It's Hutchinson's sense of humor that gets her through a tough day. At
4:15 she still has an hour of paperwork ahead of her before going home. She
picks up a stack of papers she plans to hand out to her teachers the next
morning and groans.
Hutchinson had asked a clerk to punch holes so the pages could be fastened
into reports. The holes got punched in -- but down the right-hand side of
the pages. Then she laughs out loud. "That's what you have to do when you're
a principal. You've got to laugh and keep going."