The Learning Curve

I woke up with a headache.  Well, I'm not sure I woke up with it but by the time I finished showering and putting myself together for work, I felt the inkling of a headache.  By 7:30, I couldn't adjust my contacts correctly, which intensified the headache.  So, I wasn't feeling very well and thought today would be a day where I simply went through the motions.

The kids had a different idea.

Part of my job is to handle discipline issues.  Up to this point, I hadn't addressed a discipline referral all year.  It isn't as though they haven't crossed my desk. And it isn't as though I was avoiding them.  It's that my amazing team took the brunt of the issues because 1) I was greener than green when it came to dealing with discipline issues and 2) it was Homecoming.  I sat in on a couple of conferences but never took the lead.

By 1PM today, I had addressed five discipline issues.  The learning curve was steep.  At times, I was worried that I wouldn't know what to say or say the wrong thing.  But the issues were pretty clear, the consequences were clear, and I found myself working with the kids like I had when I was their teacher and they made bad choices in my gym.

And you know what I learned?  I'm good at this administrative thing.  I'm good at finding out why kids do what they do.  I'm good at digging to the root of an issue.  And I'm good at helping kids realize a better solution than the path they originally chose.

It's just a matter of giving consequences for choices and I've been doing that in my classroom for YEARS.  Granted, some of the issues are bigger than anything I've dealt with before and I needed to learn the correct language to use.  That's where my great team stepped in and helped me figure out what to do.  And there will be times when I won't know what to do or say but I'm learning that's ok too.  I'll get it.

The day flew by and the headache never went away but I learned a lot today.

It's been a long time since I've learned something new at work.

I liked it.