Being an administrative assistant where I was a teacher for 12 years has been challenging to navigate at times. But I love Princess Anne. I think there is something kind of magical about this school. We have lots of passionate teachers who are experts in their content area and experts in instruction, but what I think is really special about Princess Anne is that all of these teachers also care about their students’ development and what they’re doing outside the classroom. They want to nurture those students and help them become more confident people. That’s why I wanted to stay here.
It’s sort of like the tryout to be Assistant Principal. I had been teaching for a number of years, and I wanted to do something different. I felt like I wanted to affect change in a different way. I was the Department Chair for World Languages. I found that I really liked working with adults, and talking with adults about what good instruction looks like and how to help kids. I really enjoyed that part of my job. And so I decided to make the leap.
I’m surprised by how unpredictable the day is. As a teacher, I knew exactly where I would be at 7:20 and at 10:28, I knew what class I was teaching, what students I would see. With this position, I may come in and have my day scheduled out, and I’ll think I’m going to meet with different students, and I’m going to do classroom observations. And then some emergency arises and I spend my day doing that.
I was apprehensive about doing discipline and interacting with students who were having difficulty in the classroom, but it’s actually been my favorite part of the job. Just having the opportunity to sit down and talk with students and really listen to them and hear what is happening and why they’re having these problems, and to help them come up with self-management strategies has been really rewarding for me. #WeAreVBSchools
