My husband and I both graduated college and landed our first teaching jobs in a rural Eastern Washington school district. After teaching for five years, we both completed our master’s programs and secured our continuing education certification. To make a long story short…in a very short turn-around, we added our first child to the family. Now, we were faced with the very interesting challenge of finding daycare for a 2-month-old colicky baby, which there was none of! Our solution was to have me stay home for those first few months. I quickly realized that being a “stay-at-home” parent was unbelievably challenging and to be honest, I wasn’t all that good at it! We engaged with the MOPS groups and had mommy and me dates, but I could never really figure out a schedule that worked for us. Thankfully at the end of winter break, the baby went to daycare, and I went back to the classroom.
During this time, many of the moms we interacted with would say, upon introductions, “I just stay home with the kids” or “I am just a stay-at-home mom.” This struck me as odd…because there was nothing “just” happening in my day-to-day schedule. It was difficult, it was challenging to navigate, it was isolating at best. The baby survived (lol) but I struggled to get dinner on the table, keep up with the laundry, grocery shopping, and deal with soothing a colicky baby to mention just a few things I was working to accomplish. I was exhausted and at times frustrated. They (whoever they are!) say hindsight is 20/20…and “they” were right! It was a season. There was a start and an end, and we made it!
Flash forward to 2022 and I am finding many parallels between that season and my life and the work AWSP is working to complete this year in supporting our hardworking school leaders. We are still amid managing a global situation that feels difficult, challenging to navigate; we feel exhausted and at times, frustrated. But have no fear…this IS a SEASON. It’s going to happen!
As I look to find inspiration for mentoring and supports, I ran across this Learning Forward article (membership required to read). I think it has some real merit. It is about one great school leader who was able to establish coaching and mentoring supports for team members on her administrative team. Principal Shannon Kersey doesn’t look at her assistants as “just an assistant principal” but as human beings with skills and talents she needs to nurture and tease out. Shannon and her team share the different mentoring strategies they employed and how this mentoring/coaching assisted them in being prepared to transition to a new leadership role in time. If you are a school leader who is interested in some great practice around growing your team members, I’d encourage you to give this short article a read!