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, faxes, e-mail, 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."