Currently I teach high school and middle school Spanish in two northern Maine mill towns. I am officially employed by Stearns High School in Millinocket, Maine. I receive my contract, salary and benefits, and professional development from the Stearns High School where I teach one class of Spanish 1 and one class of Spanish 2. Due to economic conditions affecting the economy, ie, the downsizing and subsequent closing of the paper mill, Stearns High School and Millinocket Middle School were consolidated a few years ago (before my time). The middle school is now housed on the second story of the high school. Due to its proximity, teachers of art, music, and foreign language are “shared” between the two schools. I teach one section of middle school Spanish. Last year I taught 6th graders and this year I am teaching 8th grade. When I asked the “shared” high school/middle school principal what I would be teaching next year, he replied that he did not know and it would depend on what the middle school schedule looked like. The towns of Millinocket and East Millinocket share central office administration, the Superintendent’s office. As a result of this organizational structure, other departments or positions are shared in order to minimize costs and duplication of services. The Spanish teacher position is one such position that is shared with East Millinocket’s high school, Schenck High School. Schenck pays half my salary and benefits for me to teach two classes of Spanish 1 and one class of Spanish 2. Therefore, I alternate daily between schools. The alignment of the two schools’ schedules are made possible due to another administrative unit, Region 3, the area vocational-technical school, shared by the communities surrounding Millinocket (Stearns High School) E. Millinocket (Schenck High School), Lincoln (Mattanawcook Academy), Lee (Lee Academy), and Howland (Penobscot Valley High School). In order for all five high schools to “share” voc/tech services, a commitment to maintain a unified schedule is made among schools.
Both high schools in which I teach maintain a block schedule. In this schedule, there are four 80 minute classes on “White” days and a different set of four 80 minute classes on school-colored (Blue at Stearns and Green at Schenck) days. Therefore, for the past two years I’ve taught under contract for Mill/E.Mill, I go to Stearns High/Millinocket Middle on “White Days” and Schenck on “Green Days”. The Superintendent’s Office is housed at Schenck High School across from the main office. All this coming and going in my life gives me a special vantage point to observe how towns organize their rural educational systems. In order to survive in different systems, I’ve had to adapt quickly and learn, at times, to subdue my own pyschological need for routinization and efficiency in my personal life. The landscape of Maine rural education is changing drastically as my professional career as educator is unfolding. From 1999 to 2005, I taught under similar circumstances as a “shared” resource between Lee Academy and Penobscot Valley High School. Between 2005-2008, I taught in private schools in Tampa, Florida and Monterry, Mexico. My city kids students had a difficult time envisioning rural Maine. I used to joke that in a geographical area the size of Tampa (or Monterrey) and its environs, I had taught Spanish in 80% of the high schools. The 3 years teaching outside of rural schools has further given me a vantage point for observing the changes that have come to rural Maine education. I am hoping that the Organizational Profile assignment through this graduate level class in Theories of Administration will give me a framework for reflecting on the administrative problems and solutions that declining enrollments and consolidation concurrently through the demands of No Child Left Behind and Maine Learning Results have created, as well as learn more about the theories of educational leadership.
I interviewed for my position in July 2008 with the principals from both high schools. The principal at Schenck, P.H., had actually called my family the year before when I was in Mexico to ask if I was interested in teaching Spanish. Schenck’s principal, P.H., and I had taught in adjacent classrooms for several years during the 90’s at Lee Academy. She was hired as middle school principal in Howland when I was teaching Spanish at Penobscot Valley High School in Howland, so we knew each other fairly well. Stearns’ principal, B.J., had been the school’s leader for 3 years. I can’t tell you as a potential candidate how positive I felt about being offered the position knowing that I was the only highly qualified candidate who had interviewed for the previous 2 years. The year before both schools used the Rosetta Stone computer program monitored by an Ed. Tech who did not speak the Spanish. That interview was the first interview in my professional career in which I had a sense of being “courted” for the position. I mention these small details in order for people to understand the issues surrounding rural Maine that a school leader or potential teacher will need to make peace with in order to be successful in his or her career.
The next day P.H. called me on the phone to offer me the position, “And did you hear that I am resigning as principal this year to take the MSAD#30 (the town we both live in) principal position?” she asked.
“Congratulations!” I offered, having in fact already heard all about her hiring. My brother-in-law, J.C., had been the acting principal for the middle school that year and felt strongly that he would (that he should) be offered the consolidated district-wide principalship because of several education-boosting, cost-cutting organizational elements he had implemented. J.C. is a Lee-transplant, having been raised in California, served in the military, and primed in cutting-edge electronics through General Electric. He married my sister and saw the wisdom of raising their family in the “quiet” town of Lee and pursued an education in Education. In what seems like a blink of an eye, he landed his B.S., his M.Ed, and even his C.A.S. What J.C. doesn’t always understand is how small-town politics works. I remember fondly my own naivety once believing that small, rural Maine school systems would jump at a chance to hire an honors graduate with UMaine English teaching experience. The MSAD 30 school board was coompletely justified on paper in hiring P.H. She had five years of school leadership experience. Besides, she was from Lee, taught many of the Board members or their children, and her husband’s family was connected in town politics.
“You can do one of two things,” I had advised my brother-in-law earlier that day. “You can get mad and go do something else that pays you a lot more money but takes you away from here OR you can just ‘play the game’ and wait it out. P.H. will put her time in until the Superintendent job opens up and she’ll get that job. If you’re still around, you can apply again.” J.C. decided to “play”. He added some of his own California-style ingredients to the “game”, however–passive/aggressive resistance to P.H.’s leadership. If a task is not in his job description, he does not do it. That was a pretty sobering reality for P.H. the summer she stepped into the middle school. J.C. had wired the school Internet and network according to industry specifications while he was acting principal. P.H. wanted the network moved to a different school location and asked J.C. to come change it. He told her he wasn’t the Technology Director and that he wasn’t required to do it. P.H. told maintenance to move it. J.C. advised maintenance that there was no way he would ever get it rewired after moving it. I think P.H. had to hire an expensive technology consultant. I’m not sure J.C.’s adaptations to the game of small school politics will end up serving him well or not in the long run? I’ve heard people say, “He’s pissed a lot people off.” For two years he has gone through his job as teacher adding value to each student’s education by personally securing grants for cool field trips and “WOW” technology in his classroom. He coaches during all 3 seasons, adding that he doesn’t have to go to staff meetings with P.H. Recently MSAD’s Superintendent M.L. gave his notice. Let the games continue!
In no way is MSAD 30’s political maneuvering unique. I had just been hired by 2 mill town schools whose Superintendent S.A. was bad-mouthed in every edition of the Lincoln News for her insensitivity and ineptness at her job. “What kind of hornet’s nest am I going into?” I wondered to myself. Worse, I had planned to ally myself with P.H. so I could figure out how things worked in the 2 towns. She had been by boss for 1 day. “Oh, my God! It must be pretty bad if P.H. would take a $15,000 pay cut to go somewhere else!”
A month later when I landed at Schenck, I discovered that nothing could have been farther from the truth. As an “outsider”, I have learned the value of eating lunch in the Teacher’s Room if you want to know what’s going on in a school (at least from the perspective of your colleagues). For the first few months, P.H.’s departure was the topic of at least five minutes of every lunch period. The teachers and staff were delighted that she was gone. From their perspectives, she did not back up the teachers with student discipline (“She was afraid of the teenagers”); she was not flexible with teacher requests; and she ran the school with a bureaucratic-style that alienated both the teachers and students. I could picture that perception of P.H. being true. When she was a History teacher next to my Spanish class, I had often observed that her classes were full of obedient students. Those students who did not adapt to her teaching style were not successful in her class or went to the other teacher. In a small town school, as I have also observed in the Catholic school I taught in, teachers who manage their classrooms this way are considered “good” teachers because their classrooms are full of quiet students. I was surprised that she didnt’ “fit” well in this factory town.
For the past 2 years at Schenck High School, the principal has been Wally Farrington. He made his career in the East Millinocket school system and had been Transportation Director. The School Board “courted” him to be principal because they knew who he was and that the teachers would follow him. Wally is a textbook classical administrator who has gained some wisdom over the years. He knows that if he supports the teachers, they will support and follow him. He is open in staff meetings, asking, “What do you want me to do?” With a student enrollment of 175, Schenck High School students have an over 80% drug and alcohol use epidemic, rampantly poor basic literacy skills, and low aspirations. The obvious answer to that question was “control the students” so we can teach them. That has happened mostly and teachers understand that there are always going to be those 5 to 10 kids throughout the school who will drive you crazy and there’s nothing anyone can do about it. Wally has been very skillful at balancing those children’s needs with the needs of a productive classroom. I have seen morale go up steadily since I first arrived, and I credit that with school leadership.
In my first year of teaching at Stearns, my principal was B.J. B.J. was from “down-river”. He had been there for 3 years and commuted home on weekends. Teachers were not happy with B.J. I believe the “fit” wasn’t right. B.J. seemed to genuinely care about people, but he gave off the appearance of a “hippy” or a “yuppy”. In fact, some teachers referred to him as “The Duuuuude”. I never completely figured out the source of discontent with him nor did I understand his administrative style. I’m going out on a limb here, and going to make some conjectures. They could be wrong? I think B.J. wanted an Open System in which he kept all the resources flowing in, through, and out of the system. The problem was that in a factory town, people expected more of a classical administrator in a socio-political game of give and take. He didn’t keep the resources well greased. Teachers found him non supportive of their discipline demands and budget requests. Students did not change behaviors upon threat of going to the Principal’s office.
I saw the crux of the matter in his eyes one day at staff meeting. Teachers had worked on a draft for a re-accreditation study that year and had submitted it to the school board and Superintendent. There were some very strong comments about not supporting teachers, non-ratified teacher and classified staff contracts, poor district leadership, etc. in the report. “Upon direction of the Superintendent, I have rewritten your report,” he notified us one day as he was passing out the drafts of the document. The Teacher’s Union leader, who has worked at the national level for the NEA, began her “official” questioning of the changes. B.J. was caught in administrative hierarchy. His supervisor had directed him to do a task that he his supervisee’s would be righteously angry with. The concentric circles that are supposed to work in an Open System were completely disfunctional and he did not have the skill or political power to change them. He was beaten. He resigned that Spring. I don’t think anyone gave him a party.
With budgets falling faster than the oak leaves in Fall, the School Board saved money this year by restructuring the administration. They are attempting another “shared” position strategy. Because the high school and middle school are housed in the same building, this year they hired the middle school principal, J.P., to serve as the 6-12 principal and gave him an assistant principal, C.B.. Having recently read about the Pennsylvania beavers and their dams, I am reminded that when I first learned of this arrangement, I had another dam image come to mind–that of the Holland dams and all the holes the little Dutch girl tried to plug. Both men are very young, This is J.P.’s second year as school leader and C.B’s first. My sense is that the teachers and the students like them. I haven’t gotten a sense of their administrative styles yet because I haven’t had a lot of interaction with them. I had more interaction with Jed last year when he was the middle school principal and I was trying to figure out how to teach 6th graders. I would have have 1 or 2 students who were management problems and I just didn’t have the resources to deal with them, so I would send them to Mr. J.P.’s office.
Today in my high school class I had a small group of freshmen boys acting out. Someone kept farting and the boys around them would giggle, cover their noses, etc. I had to stop class twice to get them to settle down. Their typical response was that I couldn’t “get them in trouble” because you can’t help it if you’re farting. “No, but go to the bathroom if you have to poop,” I instructed, “and if you disrupt my class again I’m going to take you to the school nurse.” Within 15 minutes, they were at it again. By this time, I had gotten through the vocabulary and had the class working on an assignment, “R.W., come with me,” I directed. R.W’s a good kid, but a silly kid. He’s the kid that can learn if you take away all his reasons to NOT learn–like playing freshmen boy games. He argued with me all the way down the hall, begging me to not make him go to the nurse. When the nurse’s door was closed, he thought he was off the hook, but I held my ground. You only get one chance to play your hand when freshmen boys try to see if the teacher will actually follow through on threats. I was just going to have him go sit in the office until he could get himself together, stop being silly, and return to class. As it turned out, J.P. was there and ushered us into the office where R.W. was loudly defensive. I explained my side of the situation. I was impressed at J.P.s grasp of the situation.
“You just want him to stop acting out and come back to class?” he asked me. That was it. Precisely. Just back me up this time without making me look like an idiot who send a kid to the office for farting. “And I’ll come down and talk to the other one, too.” Perfect. The boys were mad at me but the silliness stopped. I helped both of them clean out the semester one worksheets they wouldn’t need in their notebooks and organize what was left. A boy in the aisle next to them wanted to know if he could quit Spanish and if guidance would call his mother. I said it was too late in the year to drop Spanish without a good reason and that his mom would have to sign any Add/Drop forms. The bell rang and I took a big sigh of relief. Later, J.P. followed up with me on the boys’ behavior, “Did they behave when they came back to class? You handled that very well.” Hmm. Thanks. That’s one of two interactions I’ve had with J.P. this year.
I also had my first interaction with C.B. today. He keeps his office on the middle school floor, but he’s doing my observation and I had to go do a Pre-Ob. today. We talked for awhile and decided what class I would like him to come to and what he’d be seeing. I’m piloting a new unit with my Spanish 2 at Stearns because I have 5 kids, 2 of whom are seniors and they get tired of the Spanish pop music I do for the culture and speaking/listening curriculum. I wanted to introduce conquest and settlement of Latin America to them, so I brought in a game I learned to play in Mexico called “Settlers of Catan”. It’s a little bit like “Risk” but more fun. The players settle an island, gain access to resources which they trade to build roads, settlements, and towns. They loved the game so much that they asked me if they could play again this week (it takes about 2.5 hours to play the game through). “Yes, I think I can make the case for spending class time doing this game if you agree to speak in Spanish.” That seemed agreeable to them. At the end of the block I show the foreign film “Aguirre, Wrath of God”. It’s a German film directed by Werner Herzog and starring Klaude Kinski about a failed Spanish expedition by Pizarro to find El Dorado, The City of Gold. I hadn’t watched this movie since college, so I had forgotten many things about it. When I filter this film through the study of leadership and organizations, as I’m doing this time, it’s a fascinating commentary on how a leader immerge when the bureaucratic systems fail. What is the difference between an appointed leader and the social leader? What is the difference between an administrator and a leader? Of course, by the end of the film, the leader has gone mad and everyone dies. That’s the Germans for you. Anyway, C.B. decided he would love to come see us “play”.
“I have a couple of questions for you that don’t have to do with observations: First, tonight there is a joint school boards meeting to discuss the future of “shared” services in light of the fact that the 2 towns are dissolving their organizational structure. Since the Spanish teacher is a “shared” service, what do you think will happen to my job? And second, I’m taking a grad class, Theories of Administration, and need to ask a school leader what style administrator he is?”
“First, I don’t know why the 2 schools would not continue to share services. We share an elementary art teacher, the First Class server, the PowerSchool server, and Spanish. We’re just not going to share a Superintendent anymore.”
“Does Millinocket have a huge local budget shortfall next year like East Millinocket?” I ask because yesterday we had to go to a special finance meeting to hear that East Millinocket schools would be $250,000 short of necessary funding and that there would be likely staff cuts.
“No, we haven’t heard anything about budget shortfalls, yet. And to answer your leadership style question, the Board asked me before I took this job if I could handle being out of the classroom. Wouldn’t I miss the kids? I don’t miss the kids because I can take the teaching I was doing in the classroom with a limited number of students and help empower more teachers to teach more students. I like the idea of being able to help teach more kids.” So I don’t think that was the answer I was looking for about leadership style, but I was running late and still had photocopying to do before my Block 2 class arrived. I will continue considering these questions as I explore how rural schools are organized.
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